CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – You may have noticed a yellow boat-shaped buoy with reflective tape, lights, and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) emblem near the mouth of the Headwater Diversion Channel south of Cape Girardeau – but please don’t touch!
“This buoy, which is one of several deployed in the Mississippi River basin by the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC), allows MDC to monitor the water for oxygen, temperature, nutrients, water clarity, and collects data on wind and sunlight,” said MDC’s Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) Program Supervisor and Scientist Molly Sobotka. “This information helps MDC understand the water quality in the river, regional differences in river reaches, and how sediments flow through the system.”
Sobotka said the project is made possible by the Department’s long-standing partnership with NGRREC.
“This location is one of several that comprise NGRREC’s Great Rivers Ecological Observatory Network (GREON),” she said. “The mission of the GREON project is to advance our understanding of large-floodplain river ecology by collecting and sharing high resolution data on key water quality parameters with scientists, managers, and the public.”
And the work in Cape Girardeau is an important step in establishing this network, Sobotka said.
Data from the buoy will help scientists understand how major events – like floods – impact the river in “near real-time” by measuring hourly water quality and weather data, she said. The data is then collected during floods or storms when it would otherwise be difficult or dangerous to collect manually, Sobotka said.
“I and the other scientists involved with the project request that boaters, anglers, and hunters avoid disturbing this equipment,” she said. “The buoy’s monitoring equipment is fragile and near impossible to replace.”
For more information, contact Molly Sobotka at Molly.Sobotka@mdc.mo.gov. For information about GREON, contact John Sloan at jjsloan@lc.edu.