$1 million invested in real-time data collection to protect drinking water
UWindsor researchers and their partners have received more than $1 million to deploy real-time continuous monitoring instruments into Lake Erie to better understand and predict development of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and to protect and secure drinking water in southern Ontario.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance grant, along with industry partner funds, were awarded to the cross-disciplinary team which includes researchers from UWindsor’s Faculties of Science and Engineering, as well as partner universities and collaborators from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“These real-time sensors are a game changer because we might be able to identify what is causing algal blooms and use that information to predict when and where they are going to happen,” says Jill Crossman, co-PI and assistant professor in the School of the Environment at UWindsor.
HABs have serious implications for drinking water treatment. Once in the system, they can cause processes to break down and lead to service interruptions, making blooms an increasing societal concern.