Creating Water Pollution Gradient Maps as a Tool for Educating Community Stakeholders

A method of mapping water pollution and tracking it to its source will be described that produces synoptic views of water flow patterns, water quality, and sediment erosion in an easily understood format called a pollution gradient map.  Stopping pollution is a costly and challenging process given the large number of pollutants that are released into the environment.  To address this challenge the Ocean Research & Conservation Association (ORCA) has developed a pollution mapping system called “Fast Assessment of Sediment Toxicity” or FAST, that uses bioluminescent bacteria as a broad spectrum bio-assay to test sediment toxicity.  FAST greatly reduces the per sample costs and allows testing of much larger physical areas at higher resolution than surveys that depend on running a full toxicity screen on each sample. Once pollution sinks are located, the next step is to determine the water flow patterns that created them.  To accomplish this ORCA has developed the ORCA Kilroy™ network, a wireless array of low-cost sensors that continuously measure the physical characteristics of water (flow speed and direction, temperature, salinity, depth, and turbidity).  Kilroy™ networks can also be coupled with weather stations to provide meteorological data such as rainfall, wind speed and direction and solar intensity. All of these data are streamed via cellular signals through ORCA’s database to the web and are made freely available to the public.

ORCA’s focus is on developing a new and innovative approach to ecosystem based management that is specifically targeted at generating scientific data that will have a significant impact.  Traditionally, science has been accomplished by a small group of highly trained academic researchers deploying expensive and complicated equipment followed by years of analysis resulting in papers that are published in specialized academic journals.  These results rarely make it out of the academic realm and are typically of little interest to the public or policy makers.  ORCA’s approach shifts this paradigm by directly involving the public and policy makers in a way that has a better chance of affecting public policy. 

Working with volunteers, interns and students (both high school and college) ORCA has successfully demonstrated that it is possible to generate critically needed scientific data in a way that directly involves the public, raises community awareness of marine pollution, and sidesteps the need for funding by government agencies, while providing feedback to stakeholders, the public and policy makers on whether management goals are being met and tax dollars effectively spent.