Title: Monitoring the Water Quality Parameters of Mayaguez Bay

Duration: June 1, 2001 - May 31, 2004

Project Summary
The contamination of Mayaguez Bay should be monitored in order to design an efficient strategy that modifies the human activities and consequently reducing the level of water pollution. The proposed research attempts to develop a practical tool to monitor some of the most important contaminates in Mayaguez Bay. It is expected to accomplished the following objectives:

• Identify a set of transfer function models to estimate the water pollution induced by rivers discharging into the Mayagez Bay.
• Perform experimental campaigns to measure water-quality parameters and bio-optical data to validate remote sensing measurements over the Mayaguez Bay.
• Develop empirical equations to estimate water quality parameters based on remote sensing measurements.

The following tasks have been scheduled to accomplish the research objectives:

1. Develop a database system to organize and control the water quality parameters for the seven USGS stations, located in Añasco, Yaguez, and Guanajibo rivers.
2. Develop around 24 transfer function models to estimate water pollution deposition on Mayaguez Bay.
3. Plan experimental campaigns. This task involves the procurement of the necessary boat, equipment, materials, and personal to perform the field samplings, which must be conducted on a clear-sky day.
4. Conduct water quality samplings (at least once every year).
5. Collect remote sensing radiance measurements.
6. Develop empirical equations to express correlation between radiance and chlorophyll a.
7. Design a neural network to express the relationship between radiance and quality parameters.
8. Identify, organize, and extract historical satellite data to implement the monitoring system. Thus, radiance will be converted into concentration of chlorophyll a.