Sensor calibration, maintenance, and quality control are critical to producing good long-term sensor-collected data. Before collecting any data, we first needed to develop a database that could collect all of the continuous measurements from the sensors and enable potentially anomalous data to be identified and discarded.
Project team members Tom Bernardin, Tanmay Agrawal, and Lara Gulmann led the development of a database that accepts Onset oxygen sensor data and replicates the calculations and adjustments that the Onset logger software (HOBOware) makes to oxygen measurements based on the water’s salinity and temperature. This ensures that we can compare our data with other communities of water quality monitors that use these same high-quality and widely available data logging sensors. The new database makes it easier for us to identify data collected in the field that does not pass data quality standards.