A Prototype for the Continuous and Cost-Effective Measurement of River Discharge

Water management is an important part of the monitoring of the natural environment. For many years water managers relied on field measurements for water quality evaluation. However this process is being revolutionized through the introduction of new technologies such as sensor networks. Discharge is one of the most important parameters in water quality measuring systems. Currently, not much research has been done towards autonomous and continuous measurement of discharge but only on measuring other water quality parameters. In this paper, we present a system for continuous measurement of discharge using the slope-area rating curves and Manning´s equation. We propose a cost-effective prototype based on wireless sensor network for data acquisition and storage.