Hudson River Monitoring

Project Overview

The Beczak Environmental Education Center is located on the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York, just minutes from New York City. Beczak’s mission is to educate people about the ecology, culture, and history of the Hudson River by providing interactive educational experiences focused on the River. Beczak does this to help people become better stewards of the Hudson and better citizens of their community. Beczak provides 350 programs reaching over 5,400 people annually at their waterfront interpretive center.

To expand the environmental learning experience at the center, Beczak’s Exhibit Curator and Educator, Jennifer Mokos, contacted Fondriest Environmental to configure a system to monitor Hudson River water quality and weather. The system allows Beczak to connect more people with the Hudson River. The data will be integrated into a new exhibit at the center that will allow visitors to view and understand the conditions in the dynamic Hudson River estuary, and will also be incorporated into the new marsh educational programs that are currently under development. People can also access the data anytime from anywhere with an internet connection on the NexSens WQData.com website. There have already been reports of people taking time out from work to check on the river!

System Description

Fondriest configured a NexSens data logging and radio telemetry system to continuously monitor Hudson River water quality and water level as well as local weather conditions. The station is equipped with a Vaisala WXT510 multi-parameter weather transmitter, YSI 600XLM multi-parameter water quality sonde and level sensor. A NexSens 4100-iSIC radio data logger transmits data from the river site into the building at 30-minute intervals. iChart software processes the data and posts it to a www.WQData.com website, where anyone interested in the Hudson River can view both historic and real-time data.

The NexSens system enables the Beczak Center to continuously monitor the Hudson River, and easily share this information over the web. The real-time data provided by the system will be used extensively in educational programs for those of all ages.

Customer Testimonial

“Working with the Fondriest team has been great! They took the time to answer all of our questions and helped build a system that exactly met our needs and budget. The entire process from initial specs to installation was a pleasurable, positive experience. They have continued to offer amazing support and assistance even after the system was installed. Overall, they have made a seemingly complex system quite simple to install and operate. I would not consider working with anyone else.”

— Jennifer Mokos, Beczak Exhibit Curator

Image credit: Flickr