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Mitigating water pollution

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Water contaminants damage aquatic ecosystems and threaten human health. Nitrogen pollution affects over 70% of U.S. freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems, costing $2.2 billion each year in lost livelihoods, recreation, and remediation. Without accurate, localized measurements, we cannot adequately evaluate interventions nor progress. However, current measurement techniques restrict remediation efforts to reactive, general responses rather than proactive, site-specific interventions. This project aims to advance remediation efforts by integrating newly developed nitrogen sensors with machine learning for adaptive sensor control and data analysis on the site, watershed, and eventually regional and national scales.

Project: Taking the Pulse of the Nitrogen Cycle: Electrochemical Water Quality Sensor Design, Deployment, and Data
Funding Source: Environmental Venture Projects 
Funding Year: 2022 
Research Areas: Freshwater
Regions: North America

Research Team:
Wil Tarpeh (Chemical Engineering), 
Kate Maher (Earth System Science), 
Fiorenza Micheli (Oceans), 
Debbie Senesky (Aeronautics and Astronautics)

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