Introducing the first GRIL autonomous buoy, Lac Simoncouche, spring 2013
In May 2013, the first GRIL autonomous buoy was installed on Lac Simoncouche, near UQÀC’s FERS field station, in the Saguenay region. The GRIL buoy design is based on the C-BASS buoy prototype, with several improvements. The C-BASS, installed on Lac Croche in June 2011, was developed for the CarBBAS chair, held by Paul del Giorgio at UQAM. Both buoys are equipped to measure over 20 different parameters in water and air and, being solar powered, they are completely autonomous. Data is logged on-board and transmitted via satellite to an internet site for viewing and downloading. In this way, the GRIL buoy sends hourly updates of temperature and dissolved O2 profiles, dissolved CO2, PAR, chlorophyll, CDOM and turbidity, as well as 6 weather parameters, 3-axes of orientation, and battery voltage. This kind of high resolution data is already being used in many applications. For example, we can examine how a lake’s physical, biological, and chemical properties are affected by stochastic events, such as storms. We can also use diel cycles in dissolved CO2 and O2 to model lake metabolism and how it changes in time. We will ultimately link transmissions from the GRIL and C-BASS buoys to the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), a global network of people studying lakes, many using high resolution data from buoys. The addition of these two new Canadian sites to GLEON will increase the visibility of the GRIL and create opportunities for collaborations world-wide.
Alice Parkes, Paul del Giorgio, Yves Prairie and Dominic Vachon
view poster, presented March 1, 2013 at the Annual GRIL Symposium, in PDF format
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