Project Overview: As the world increasingly deals with the presence of Climate Change, we will increasingly need quality research to understand how it will affect the ecosystems that surround us. For this reason, this project is a collaboration with an existing research team investigating the effects of a changing climate on small aquatic ecosystems such as ponds. In the past, the associated research project has focused primarily on the effects of increasing pond temperatures. But, water oxygen saturation is another key indicator of ecosystem health. Not only does oxygen saturation directly affect the well-being of pond flora and fauna, but it also is affected by a warming climate.

Thus, the purpose of this project is to develop an oxygen saturation measurement system to support climate research. There are a few major challenges that arise when considering oxygen saturation measurement. First, measuring dissolved oxygen saturation is a more complicated process than measuring temperature. So, finding a dissolved oxygen probe suitable for the research without being prohibitively expensive was the initial challenge. Next was to test the chosen dissolved oxygen probe to identify any additional unforeseen complications when taking measurements. Lastly, the research’s current measurement setup is nearly saturated with temperature probe connections. Thus a self-contained measurement package would need to be developed to easily incorporate dissolved oxygen measurements into the existing research.