AC² Students Talk About Their Experience in The Field [DRAFT]
As researchers, we used environmental sensors to monitor changes in lake water quality data. This was the focus of our research because lakes are a vital economic, recreational and environmental resource in the Hudson Valley where we are based. The EXO1 was the specific environmental sensor we used in our selected lakes Mohonk and Osiris. The EXO1 can sense parameters such as temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll simultaneously, making it a very efficient research tool. Before it could be used in the field, it required calibration for each parameter in a specific water solution, so that it would read accurate measurements. After exporting the data from the EXO1, we used the R programming language to process and visualize the data collected. One of our visualizations revealed an anomaly in Mohonk Lake: oxygen and chlorophyll levels are expected to be highest at lakes surface but at Mohonk they were highest about 9 meters down. We also used R to create graphs of historical data available to us, which showed irrefutable evidence that temperature in the Mohonk area has increased over the past 130 years.