Friends of Biscayne Bay is currently working on two exciting initiatives to improve water quality monitoring. Find out more below!
Initiative 1: Sonde Location Project and Social Media Outreach
FIU’s Institute of Environment has targeted 6 zones to add 8 autonomous realtime water quality monitoring devices (sondes) throughout North Biscayne Bay, the Little River, and Miami River that need increased water quality monitoring devices. Water quality is one of the most pressing issues with Biscayne Bay, causing seagrass die-offs, fish kills, and harmful algal blooms.
Friends of Biscayne Bay is working with landowners in these critical zones willing to place sondes on their docks and seawalls. This initiative, fully funded by the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, will allow us to better target water quality issues leading to and in Biscayne Bay. As part of this effort, we are also working on joint social media posts with FIU to increase public awareness about Biscayne Bay’s water quality.
Want to volunteer and learn more how you can get involved in this project? Email [email protected].
Initiative 2: B-BROIPS Open Access Data Project
In partnership with FDEP, Miami-Dade County, and the support of FOBB, Florida International University was granted resources to conduct the Biscayne Bay and Reef Observation, Interpretation and Prediction System, known as B-BROIPS. The study area of BBROIPS is defined by the boundaries of Miami-Dade County and extends to the reef zone where management questions are most crucial and pressing. This project will support Biscayne Bay water quality and restoration efforts by cre
ating a comprehensive, accessible platform for accessing scientific data collected within Biscayne Bay. The platform will be characterized by fast access to a wide variety of data-types (including old, digitized records as well as live/online auto-sampler type data), as well as the ability to perform complex analytical queries with high computational efficiency.
We have hosted two preliminary workshops to access stakeholder input and continue developing a tool that works for the majority. These workshops have proven to be highly successful in producing a highly needed discussion on data needs. Additionally, we were able to highlight current visualization efforts to learn from other agencies on their approach. The next workshop will take place sometime in January 2024, so stay tuned for additional information to come!
Please note the following and contribute if you can:
- Fill out this Workshop Survey even if you didn’t attend the workshops! These questions will allow us to analyze your perceptions of data query and visualization.
- Upload any data files into this DropBox link to help generate our tool.
- If you have metadata to share, please use this link: metadata.
- You can find the report from the first workshop here. We are currently processing feedback from the second workshop and will make the report available upon completion.
Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you at the next workshop!
