Environmental and water quality monitoring are of utmost interest in a context where land use changes, uncontrolled agricultural practices, human settlements, tourism and other activities affect a watershed and condition the usage of their surface waters. Such is the case of the Mar Menor lagoon in Southeast of Spain, where the EU H2020 SMARTLAGOON project stands and is implementing an intelligent environmental infrastructure and modelling that will let the construction of a digital-twin of the lagoon. Environmental monitoring generally requires of big funding and that limits the number of monitoring points and data available. For this reason, we have developed a low-cost monitoring system that can be integrated in a small-sized buoy and attached to fishing and recreational boats allowing citizens to gather water quality information – i.e. electrical conductivity and temperature – with the use of their smartphones. The usage of such devices could lead to key stakeholder engagement and citizen science activities that could enrich and ease the data gathering process.
Please see the Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6674534
Authors acknowledge Vicente M. Candela Canales for supporting the R&D investment and programs within the Vielca companies.