title: Rapid underway profiling of water quality in Queensland estuaries.
abstract: We present an overview of a portable underway water quality monitoring system (RUM-Rapid Underway Monitoring), developed by integrating several off-the-shelf water quality instruments to provide rapid, comprehensive, and spatially referenced 'snapshots' of water quality conditions. We demonstrate the utility of the system from studies in the Northern Great Barrier Reef (Daintree River) and the Moreton Bay region. The Brisbane dataset highlights RUM's utility in characterising plumes as well as its ability to identify the smaller scale structure of large areas. RUM is shown to be particularly useful when measuring indicators with large small-scale variability such as turbidity and chlorophyll-a. Additionally, the Daintree dataset shows the ability to integrate other technologies, resulting in a more comprehensive analysis, whilst sampling offshore highlights some of the analytical issues required for sampling low concentration data. RUM is a low cost, highly flexible solution that can be modified for use in any water type, on most vessels and is only limited by the available monitoring technologies.
authors.affiliation: Water Sciences Unit, Environmental Protection Agency, Queensland, 80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Brisbane 4068, Australia. jonathan.hodge@epa.qld.gov.au
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hodge
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Longstaff
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Steven
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Thornton
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: McKelvie
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D037421:Anthozoa; D001331:Automation; D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D011786:Quality Control; D011793:Queensland; D012016:Reference Values; D012767:Ships; D013672:Technology; D013997:Time Factors; D014873:Water Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D014873:Water Pollutants