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Airborne monitoring of water quality in remote regions
Mid Sweden University, Faculty of Science, Technology and Media, Department of Natural Science, Design, and Sustainable Development (2023-).
Mid Sweden University, Faculty of Science, Technology and Media, Department of Natural Science, Design, and Sustainable Development (2023-).
Mid Sweden University, Faculty of Science, Technology and Media, Department of Natural Science, Design, and Sustainable Development (2023-).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3204-4089
2023 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Sustainable development
Hållbar utveckling
Abstract [en]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out alpine regions worldwide as climate change hotspots. Expanding and diversifying summer tourism in northern Scandinavian mountains exerts additional severe pressure to these areas and their oligotrophic and sensitive aquatic ecosystems. Previous research at Mid Sweden University has shown that fecal contamination of mountain rivers, indicated by the enumeration of E. coli, is frequent in areas that are intensively being used for tourism and reindeer herding. According to the IPCC, climate change is projected to reduce raw water quality, posing risks to drinking water quality even with conventional treatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need for improved monitoring of water quality in such areas to be able to protect the ecosystem as well as the rights of indigenous people, human and animal health and to provide support for water management decision. To be able to monitor the water quality is of great importance for the sustainability of mountain regions and water sources in general. The inaccessibility of the watercourses in remote mountain areas makes it difficult to establish sufficient monitoring programs.

In this research, the use of airborne monitoring systems to assess water quality in remote regions is investigated. Remote monitoring systems based on e.g. drones and satellites have the potential to replace less climate friendly options making use of terrain vehicles, snow mobiles and helicopters. The drones can be equipped with various sensors or sampling equipment, can overcome long transportations as well as time-consuming and expensive field samplings. Drones have great potential to be employed in everyday practices as an essential part of decision support systems for monitoring, evaluation and remediation of contaminated sites. The goal is to use drones to establish water quality monitoring programs in remote regions such as the mountain areas of Northern Sweden. In this research we intend to cover the catchment area of upper parts of river Indalsälven situated in the mountain region on the Swedish/Norwegian border, including the catchment areas of the tributaries Handölan and Enan covering approximately 777km2.

One approach in this research is to image large areas of interest by the use of a multispectral camera on a drone and to identify spectral bands or band ratio´s which correlate to physicochemical parameters that are related to water quality. Another approach is to further explore the use of dronebased water sampling for laboratory or in-field analysis of microbial and chemical parameters.

Both approaches should eventually lead to the development of a drone-based monitoring program for oligotrophic rivers that can image or measure water pollution with sufficient spatial coverage and time resolution to enable early warning of outbreaks of fecal pollution. Results of this research will contribute to SDG 6, targets 3 and 6 and SDG 14. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023.
National Category
Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-49718OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-49718DiVA, id: diva2:1808795
Conference
29th International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS) Conference, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 11-13 July, 2023
Projects
Airborne monitoring of water quality in remote regions (AMORE)Available from: 2023-11-01 Created: 2023-11-01 Last updated: 2023-11-30Bibliographically approved

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Maes, SharonOdlare, MonicaJonsson, Anders

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