System Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP)

The Great Bay NERR monitors water quality at four continuous stations during the ice free months, and weather year round, as part of the System Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP).  This monitoring is done under a cooperative agreement with UNH Jackson Estuarine Laboratory.  Five parameters including temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity are measured every half hour at each of four locations using YSI 6-series multi parameter datasondes. 

The four datasondes are deployed at mid-Great Bay, and the Lamprey, Squamscott and Oyster Rivers .  The weather station collects temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), and wind speed/direction (see map: click to enlarge).

Monthly grab samples are collected at each site and processed for nutrients as well.  Samples are processed for dissolved inorganic nutrients, suspended sediments, particulate organic matter, and chlorophyll a.

The monthly nutrient sampling is conducted at low tide at the mid-Great Bay, Squamscott, Lamprey and Oyster River sites.  In addition to the monthly data, sampling is conducted every two hours over a full lunar cycle at the Oyster River location.

The Reserve is working with the Coastal Observing Center at UNH who deployed a monitoring buoy at the mid Great Bay SWMP site.  This buoy was deployed in April 2005 and will provide additional parameters such as in-situ nutrient data, fluorescence, and weather information.  All information will eventually be posted on the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS) website.

A biological monitoring project was begun in 2002 with SWMP resources. Dr. Jeb Byers’s and students in his lab have collected and processed data examining larval settlement in the Great Bay Estuary.  The New Hampshire Estuaries Project recently funded a grant submitted by Dr. Byers and Brian Smith, Reserve Research Coordinator, to continue this project and use the data as a tool for monitoring invasive species.