Low-Cost, Open Source Wireless Sensor Network for Real-Time, Scalable Groundwater Monitoring

Andrew J. Calderwood,Richard A. Pauloo,Alysa M. Yoder,Graham E. Fogg

doi:10.3390/w12041066

Andrew J. Calderwood, Richard A. Pauloo + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/w12041066

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Journal: Water	Publication Date: Apr 9, 2020
Citations: 18	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of California, Davis

Abstract

Population growth, climate uncertainties, and unsustainable groundwater pumping challenge aquifer sustainability worldwide. Efficient and data-driven groundwater supply management is a necessity to maintain essential water-dependent functions. Currently, managers lack the cost-effective, scalable, and reliable groundwater monitoring systems needed to collect vital groundwater data. Existing automated groundwater monitoring systems tend to be cost-prohibitive, and manual methods lack the spatial or temporal resolution to sufficiently meet critical water modeling, management, and policy objectives. In this study, we developed a fully automated, open source, low cost wireless sensor network (LCSN) for real-time groundwater data acquisition, processing, and visualization in the South American Subbasin Groundwater Observatory (GWO), located in California, USA. We demonstrate the steps taken to create the GWO, including field, hardware, software, and data pipeline components so that it may be easily reproduced in new areas. We find that the GWO is comparable in cost to manual measurements at a weekly measurement frequency, and costs between three and four times less than comparable commercially available telemetry and dashboard systems, largely due to the use of free open source software to acquire, clean, store, and visualize data. The open source-powered GWO thus lowers the financial and technical barrier of entry for real-time groundwater monitoring, creating the potential for more informed water management worldwide, particularly in regions whose managers are restricted by the high capital costs of commercial monitoring systems.

Highlights

Groundwater is critical in many food production systems around the world as a supplement to intermittent, and historically much more thoroughly monitored, surface water supply [1] and, in some parts of the world, is the primary source of irrigation water [2]
We describe the creation of this open source tool [28], review the technical aspects to consider when establishing a similar low cost wireless sensor network (LCSN) for groundwater monitoring, and explain our open source workflow and provide the source code
We developed an LSCN framework called the Groundwater Observatory (GWO) built on open source software in the South American Subbasin of California, USA for the research aim of studying the impact of managed aquifer recharge

Summary

Introduction

Groundwater is critical in many food production systems around the world as a supplement to intermittent, and historically much more thoroughly monitored, surface water supply [1] and, in some parts of the world, is the primary source of irrigation water [2]. Effective groundwater management depends heavily on information pertaining to changes in groundwater levels and storage. The impacts of groundwater pumping or recharge operations are not well known until months or even years after these events due to limitations in data reporting (e.g., sampling wells with a water level meter by hand, or waiting to download data from a deployed sensor). This separation between cause (e.g., pumping) and effect (e.g., water level decline and storage loss) hinders sustainable groundwater management and motivates modern real-time monitoring (Figure 1c).

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