Keeping an Eye on Water

I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners the people on Whose land I'm on I extend this
acknowledgement to the traditional owners of all the lands we're meting on today and pay my respects to their
Elders past present and emerging I acknowledge and honor The Unbroken spiritual and cultural connection
traditional owners had maintained to their lands and Waters for
Generations I'm Janet Ane the deputy director of Cesaro aaat Australia
initiative and I welcome you to our national science week webinar my talks about water quality satellites and
citizen science and I hope to inspire you to keep an eye on our water in recent times water has faced
many challenges and we've seen impacts from human activities extreme weather
events and other climate change impacts like droughts fire and
floods we've e seen harmful Alka blooms and all of these have Gravely impacted
our water security and quality by observing water from space we can see
our whole continent in aaat we combine purpose-built Earth observing satellite
images with a dense network of water sensors in our rivers lakes and coasts
by combining both the satellite data and the water sensor data we're building the
world's first Continental scale integrated water quality monitoring
system this is a huge ambition with many complexities but this is what aaat has
started to do aaat brings together water sensors
and Earth observing satellites onto a advanced cloudbased data analytics
platform on this Cloud platform we can bring in huge amounts of data and train
AI models to improve water quality information across Australia and the
globe in Australia we have a range of water quality problems like salinity you can see the salt on the
base of these dead trees in this Lake this saltiness can cause a lot of problems and impact Drinking Water
Supplies irrigation and also the biodiversity of the region or even the health of the
ecosystem algae that grow in water a tiny microscopic plants and they can
grow when conditions are really good for them they love sunshine and lots of nutrients for food and when this happens
they can get out of balance and grow rapidly causing a bloom some species of
blue green algae can be toxic and cause skin irritations sickness and even death
in animals and humans so it's not so great to swim or drink water with alal
blooms alal blooms can also reduce the amount of light going through the water
and this can increase the the ph and decrease the oxygen in
the water which may lead to the death of other plants and fish in the water some
Studies have indicated that alal toxins around affected legs have become
aerosols and can even even these can make people sick by breathing them
in floods have traditionally been natural process that move water and
nutrients out to the flood Plains and water important in Wetlands forests and
bongs however floods also cause enormous damage to houses and towns flood water
is usually very turbid and has a lot of sediment and pollutants which can cause
problems for fish and other aquatic plants black water floods occur when the
flood water picks up nutrient-rich organic material like leaves and dissolves the tannin this water has low
oxygen level and can kill fish and
plants healthy environments need healthy water and healthy systems the water is
usually pretty clear there's balanced alcohol growth and lots of oxygen this means there'll be lots of fish other
organisms lots of aquatic plants and healthy bottom habitats
in unhealthy systems the water can be very murky have algal growth out of
balance and can often have low low oxygen levels this means that any fish
or organisms will be stressed there won't be many aquatic plants and the bottom habitat is
degraded in a paper published 4 years ago they found our small-bodied freshwater fish were particularly
vulnerable to water quality impacts the authors found 22 native freshwater fish
have been identified as likely to become extinct within the next 20 years unless there's new conservation action to
improve the water quality the list of at risk species
identified in the study includes the D Tree rainbow fish the Barrow cave gunan
the red fin blueeye the little pygmy perch and stocky galaxias they're lost
would reduce the biodiversity of our freshwater systems and have impacts right throughout the
ecosystem so how can we assess water quality people have been observing the
color of water for centuries we see the Deep navy blue Waters of deep oceans
like this
here the green and turo o Waters of the coastal areas and
reefs here we have the olive green water of an inland River with an alal
Bloom it's like on around the edges of this River
here Alo blooms can vary in color depending on the species and how many of
the algae are in the water cus a blue green algae that can be
toxic these Brown and caramel colored Waters have suspended sediments that
scatter the light and make them appear very
bright very bright they also don't let much light through so aquatic plants can't grow on the
River or the lake
bed clear yellow colored water has dissolved organic matter in
it this comes from rain washing through Leaf litter and dissolving tannin and
other nutrients in the in the C attachment water color and Clarity is
one of the most obvious things for us to observe when we're looking at natural Waters usually there's three main
components besides the water itself affecting the water color and Clarity phytoplankton or algae which is
usually colored green and we have suspended sediments such as fine soils
which are usually colored milky ranging from Gray to dark brown then there's
dissolved organic matter which is colored yellow to Brown some natural processes can change
the color of water like a big rainstorm but it doesn't necessarily mean that the
water quality is bad after these events can you think what your natural rivers
and lakes and coasts are like either type in the chat or tell your teach later what color your local water body
is and why you think it is if we want to understand our water
quality we need to measure it and there's lots of different ways we can do this we can use bioindicators these are
nature's clues for environmental health we can use plants animals or microorganisms to determine water
quality if there's High biodiversity there's a large number of different species then we usually think about this
as being a healthy environment if there's low biodiversity a low number of species then we think about this is
being impacted we can use cultural indicators and these are based on the knowledge and
practices of local communities especially indigenous people who've lived in the around the water for a long
long time they can report on seasonal changes and cultural practices through
their stories and Indigenous knowledge temperature is also an
important indicator that we want to measure we know that warmer water holds
less oxygen and makes algae grow fast we also know that water temperatures impact the
health of the whole ecosystem dissolved oxygen you've already heard me talk about the
importance of dissolved oxygen but all aquatic animals need oxygen to breathe
plant and algae produce oxygen during the day but they also consume oxygen at
night if we've got high oxygen levels in the water then we usually think of that as being healthy low ox oygen levels
usually mean unhealthy or can even produce dead signs in the water pH is a
way for us to measure whether the water is either acidic or basic or alkaline we
can use a scale from 0 to 14 to make that assessment if the pH is too low
that's it it's acidic or too high it can really have impact on the fish and animals that live in the
water we can use nutrients to ass ESS water quality nutrients are really important for all uh the animals and
plants in the water so they do need some but too much can be a problem and can
cause alal blums nutrients from fertilizers and animal waste and and
sewage often become a problem in our waterways reducing the amount of nutrients going into our waterways can
help keep the the water quality uh good turbidity is also another way of
measuring water quality this is the clarity of the water of how much light gets through the water and if we have
low turbidity we we gen usually think of this as being good water quality or with
clear water High Tubity we've got murky water and lower water quality finally
we've got watercolor and this is something that we can observe with our eyes if we've got clean water we know
that that's clean and healthy if we've got green water we've got algae growing in it and too much algae can be a sign
of pollution Brown water which has got sediment in it or organic M material can
mean that there's um too much turbidity in that water column if it's red or
rusty water then that's usually a type of bacteria or comes from Iron black or
very dark water means that there's pollutants or decaying organic matter and if you've got rainbow colored water
then it's usually oil or other chemicals on the water surface so these are all ways that we can measure our water
quality in eaat we have floating boys with instruments that tell us what's
going on in the water and these make measurements every 15
minutes we also have citizen science measurements that we can use to compare with the satellite
images there are also other indicators that can help us understand water
quality that can be used as part of the Aqua Watch
program the instruments on the aqua watch boys give us lots of data which we can see live on a website this means the
instruments can detect water quality problems and we can provide early warnings of these problems or we can use
all of this data to train an AI model to make predictions of what water quality
will be like in 5 days time this is exciting new work that Co is
doing czen scientists can be used to establish a a range of different um
measurements we can use the citizen science project to increase the scientific knowledge about water quality
and use watercolor observations to understand water quality in their
environments these observations are used in monitoring water quality Cal calibrating satellite images uh in the
aaat program the Fel U scale was developed in
the late 19th century we used this in the I program the scale is composed of
21 colors going from indigo blue to Cola Brown through blue green and green and
yellow colors we match the color of the water
with the the Fel
scale please play this in
a
to increase our in the impact of our iron watercolor measurements we
sometimes provide equipment to our users and they can measure important things
like water Clarity with a sesy dish or or with a proe they can measure
dissolved oxygen conductivity and pH next slide please Eric
next slide please to help people take SE she disc measurements we've got some
training videos that we provide
oh
pretty soon as you add all of your Ion water data to the app you'll be able to see this data along with everyone else's
on the ion water Australia website if you click on the observation
tab it will take you to the dat viewer the data viewer has these donuts
with the number of measurements taken in the center the range of colors recorded is shown in the donuts or around the
circle when there's only one measurement at that location you can click on the measurement tab in the ribbon showing
here to see all the recent measurements you can click on the users
tab on the ribbon bar to show the users that have used the app recently use nickname no real names please when you
make a a login some of the people have made this a bit of a competition to see who gets the most
measurements the global view tab on the ribbon will include all the data
collected globally you might be interested to see all the different water quality around the world go and
explore the rest of the world here and finally if you want to use this
data for a research project or School assignment you can download the data into a text or CSV file using this
download data button here on the ribbon if you zoom into the measurements
you can start to see individual measurements in the data viewer on the left we've got measurements from
Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland but on the right when I scroll in you'll see the measurements
taken in the brisban river Earth observation data from
satellites can detect water quality issues like alab bloom dissolved Organics and sediment plumes using the
color signatures are visible from space the aqua watch Australia program
uses highquality satellite imagery to support Continental scale water quality
monitoring we can broaden the geographic areas that we monitor we can then deliver critical
data for managing health and environmental impacts and as well as industrial
activities the set satellites see much bigger areas than we can on the
ground this image shows you the satellite data over nindi lakes and goes
back over 38 years it was created by our colleagues at geoscience Australia's
digital Earth or DEA Australia program and it shows you the variation and
watercolor through Lakes over time you can see the watering and drying of the
lake as well as the change of colors you can also see the river colors uh
changing over time coming into the lake and the this gives us a great deal of
information about the processes that are occurring within the
lake so satellite data can give us a broadscale overview of what's Happening
in the water but to check it or validate it we need to get Point measurements
from the aaat boys or from citizen science measurements like these in keple
Bay in Queensland the satellite image was taken last year in April and on the
same day two Ion water measurements were taken and you can see the photos match
the satellite image colors pretty well in this example of two very
different colored lakes in Western Queensland we have we can look at the Historical changes of these Lakes back
to 1988 when we convert the satellite data to the same color scale as the citizen
science app the Fel Ule scale we can start to see information like water
quality and water quantity changes over time this can be compared with the data
collected by the citizen science app giving us information on water quality and quantity
you can see periods of time where uh there's there's been drought and very
little water in these legs and you can see periods of time where they've been
very turbid or very green this gives us information about how to better manage
these systems The information collected at the aaat boys can also provide a great deal
of information as it's collected every 15 minutes if you're going to create an
a I model then you usually need to train it with a great deal of information our
aaat boys are ideal for this and we can collect information about the water
color and water properties to build these AI
models the AI models are called datadriven as they are trained with real
information the AI model can then be applied to all of the historical and current satellite data of this region to
produce water quality Maps like this suspended sediment concentration map on
the right but also things like dissolved organic carbon changes in these
parameters can be used to better manage the receiving Waters of the great Barry reef and to improve the carbon
Accounting in this region the good news is you now have
tools like the ion water Australia app to help track water quality and help
aquatic plants and animals remember to check out our Aqua watch Australia and I onat Australia websites
but also have a look at the Australian citizen science Association for some other great ideas about citizen science
projects become a citizen Sciences today and help protect our habitats
thank you very much for joining us on National Science
week thanks so much Janet that was fantastic and really interesting there's
um there's a lot going on there um so you covered a lot for us uh I have a
couple of questions for you if that's okay sure all right um so first one um
if the water's colder does does that mean that it's more likely to be clean or is that not necessarily the
case it really depends we know that warmer water is less likely to have a
high percentage of oxygen in it so colder water can absorb more oxygen so
it's more likely to be um uh of good quality in a lot of areas in in the
ocean we have uh cold upwelling events where which brings nutrients so it's
full of nutrients and and oxygen and uh that attracts a lot of Fisheries so cold
water generally usually is is quite good quality but it's not a really great
indicator of um great water quality we know being hot being warm water is more
likely to have poor water quality and why is the warmer um water a
bit of a risk for poor water quality is it um just a nicer environment for all the things that are kind of affecting
water quality in the water yeah that's right uh so you know as I've mentioned
in my talk uh algae can grow in uh warmer water they love they love
summertime when the sun is shining and there's lots of nutrients uh so that you
tend to get a lot of alcohol growth during winter time when the water is warm uh warm water can also impact fish
and and other or organisms that prefer um that that are not used to that warm
water yeah and another question here um why uh sorry how much of Australia's
water is actually Inland we hear about you know a lot of water being in the ocean do you know how much is Inland I
don't and this is one of the things we uh we have so many uh systems that are
not permanent they're called ephemeral systems that come and go and so we we
really have quite variable Water Systems to be able to quantify that would be very very difficult but it would be
really exciting to have a look I think with some of the tools that we're developing in aqua watch we're finally
able to be able to make those types of Assessments we've got all of the uh
Continental data going back to 1988 in which we can make an assessment
of of where the water is on our continent at any one time
great and so kind of related to that um the ion water app where you can kind of
take photos and upload some information about the water quality where can you use that can that be used for the ocean
as well as Inland um tell us a bit about where we can get out and use it yeah
well you can use it anywhere uh in the uh Inland Waters as well as um in the
coastal and oceanic Waters it's been used all around the world for all of those areas the the one thing that you
should look for when you're trying to take an eye on Water app is to look for somewhere where you can't see the bottom
uh what we're trying to do is actually look at the water color not not the the water bottom the bottom of the the lake
or the river or or ocean so we just want to have somewhere where it's deep enough where we can see in Inland areas it
doesn't have to be very far into the water um because usually it's quite turbid but in Oceanic areas and coastal
areas a jetty or something like that is a really ideal place to to uh take a
measurement fantastic um and we had this question and I see that you've jumped in and
answered it but just for everyone who's listening and might not have the chat uh we had a question about why is the sea
blue what actually makes it that color well it's about um light and how light
um uh it uh absorbs and so with with uh
ocean water it looks blue and that was the question why is the ocean blue or
the sea blue and seawater actually absorbs all of the red light uh that
that we see and it reflects the blue light and so it appears blue for our
eyes so it's it's you know if we add more things into the water like um soil
or sediment or algae then it absorbs at different wavelengths of light and we
see the different colors whether it's green or brown or yellow and that's one of the things that
the satellites are picking up right are they doing the same sort of thing but just from really far away yes they are
and satellites can actually see um a a longer Spectrum than what we can uh
depending on the instruments that we we put up into space they can actually see
uh more than just the visible spectrum that our eyes can our eyes can see from
Blue to the to red color is part of the spectrum um bit like a rainbow we can
see every color along that that um Spectrum but a satellite we can put some
more uh sensors on the satellite to detect areas say in the infrared or near
infrared or even in the thermal infrared so these are um special devices that we
can put on these satellites to give us more information about what's happening in on
Earth cool that's really cool um we have an interesting question here so you mentioned what a problem that um algae
is and that it can become toxic as well um are there any certain fish or are there organisms that eat the algae to
remove it yes of course um all uh fish eat algae or most fish eat algae it's part
of their their natural diet and it doesn't make them sick unless there's a
toxicity associated with that algae and as I mentioned in my talk there's um
some algae called blue green algae or cob bacteria that uh some of them have
Sometimes some toxins in them and that can make fish sick as well as humans and
other animals yeah so that's a really nice segue into talking a little bit about at
the end of the day why is water quality important to people and to everyone who might be joining from school why why
might it be really important for them when they're next out and about well we've talked about as
National Science week we we're talking about species survival and also the
importance of biodiversity so one of the things I I talked about at the beginning of um this
presentation was uh some of the problems that our small-bodied fish are having in
terms of surviving with increased um pollutants going into our waterways but
also uh a decreased amount of water uh quantity so looking at connectivity of
rivers is really important uh as well as looking at water quality but with with
aqua's uh program we're really looking at focusing on the water quality aspects
and these are really important because they have impact on not only our drinking water supplies but uh the water
that we use to irrigate our crops and and other agricultural Enterprises but
we also recreate and we play in water and I think it's really important to
make sure that we keep our environment really healthy yeah yeah so really important if
you want to go for a swim or go fishing or do any of those fun things um okay
and then why do we need these citizen science photos if we've got got those satellites looking at everything from
space why do we need to see everything from like close down local to the waterways as well yeah well not only do
we have the satellites to give us the broad um overview of everything and that
that's fantastic but it can't give us the detailed information that that our
Aqua watch boys with their instruments or our citizen science data can and we
need to be able to validate or check the satellite dat data to make sure that
we're uh understanding what what information it's giving us so it's
really important to have these Point measurements the other thing is satellites at least the ones that we use
for water quality can't see through clouds not yet anyway and so what we
need is is measurements on the ground to be able to see on times when that's it's
cloudy you know you can imagine in if you're having a blood it's probably going to be quite
cloudy cuz it's probably raining quite a lot so we don't we're really riant on
groundbased measurements during that time when we don't have access to satellite data so those are the types of
situations where ground-based information is really important now satellit are great boys are great but
they're both really really expensive and Australia is a really super large place
so having a whole range of Citizen science measurements actually helps us fill in the gaps of our knowledge so in
in a lot of ways we're really um using the citizen science data as part of the
science program that's really cool um so foiled by a cloudy day so you still need us on
the ground for for those exactly um can we also um add other measurements if we
like outside of just the photo can you put other things um in the ion app uh Ion water app yeah yeah look um it's
really interesting uh some people are really Keen with um teching water quality measurements and we've actually
helped them get some equipment to to be able to add additional data to the app
so some of the things that we can get is that the easiest one and this is a measurement that has been done uh for
over 200 years it's called a sesi dis depth measurement so it's to measure
water CL so we drop a disc that's a black and white disc into the water and
we drop it down till we can't see it anymore and that gives us an estimation
of water Clarity and if you do that in the same location time and time again
you'll see it change and that will give you an indication of the change of water Clarity in your environment in your
water body so that's a really important measurement that you can do it's very
quick and easy to make a sesi disc uh to to bloy um and so that's one of the
easiest things that we can get people to add if they're really Keen we can also help them um get some other equipment
we've found in some of the uh areas where we've um use the iron water app a
lot uh that's some probes um that measure uh chemical and physical
parameters like pH conductivity um dissolved oxygen um
are really useful and I think I showed some of the videos there that how to use some of these devices and you can add
all of this information into the app and then that's recorded with your
watercolor measurement so it gives us a real opportunity to create a database of
all of these measurements and we can have a look at how things have changed over time and compare one body to
another water body great so you can do something as simp le as a photo or you could get
really into it and start measuring a few other things as well that's cool um we have a question here um someone's ask
could these satellites uh one day be able to measure the water CL uh qu uh water Clarity in a cloud or perhaps
through a cloud yeah oh wow that's a great question I don't know I mean we have
satellites at the moment called that are are radars and uh they can actually
measure Meed through clouds we have special um satellites um that are are
focused on clouds um so they measure the properties of clouds so the color of
clouds the density of clouds and the thickness of clouds so those things can
be measured at the moment and there's quite a lot of satellites I'd recommend having a look at the NASA web page for
anybody that would be interested in those types of things yeah and who knows where I will
take us with some of these things as well right um and that's a good way to kind of end on one last question um what
what kind of AI is being used for aqua watch is this the same as chat jpt or are we talking something a bit different
no we we're not using a a language model um but we are uh we're using a
datadriven approach so our datadriven approach is based on training an AI
model with lots and lots of information so our Aqua watch boys and our citizen
science data provide us a whole bunch of information at the moment we haven't use
the citizen science data to train the AI models but it's an opportunity out there
um so what we're doing is using this long these long time series of of data
that we're collecting of water quality parameters and we're training an AI
model to be able to estimate those parameters but also to predict where
they go in 5 to 10 days time fantastic that's really cool I
think that's probably all the questions that we have time for um at the moment so I might wrap it up there but thanks
so much Janet for um Coming online and sharing that with us and as Janet mentioned you can jump online um and
search for Ion water on Google and you should be able to find our website where you can get the app downloaded from
Google Play store or from the Apple App Store as well and give it a go
yourselves thanks everyone for joining us today thanks.