Posts

Close up of testing card.

Citizen Science: Water Monitoring

IIHR's Chris Jones is recruiting public volunteers to participate in a study which uses a smartphone app to detect nitrate levels in local watersheds using their phone’s camera.
A hand holds a trout
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Solving Urban Runoff Water-Quality Problems

IIHR, and the Cedar Rapids Public Works department installed real-time water-quality sensors on a stormwater outfall on McLoud Run
Tom Stoeffler speaks with Dan Mahoney standing in a river. The water-quality sensor can be seen behind them
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IIHR’s Water-quality Network Grows

Thanks to a network of water-quality sensors deployed and maintained by IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, water-quality data is now readily available for many sites in Iowa.
Corn plants stretching as far as you can see on the left, and soybeans going just as far on the right
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Understanding Changes in Raccoon River Nitrate

As Iowa farmers have planted more acres of corn to meet the demand driven by the corn-based ethanol industry, many models predicted that nitrate concentrations in Iowa streams would increase accordingly. However, recent IIHR research based on water monitoring and published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation casts doubt on these predictions.