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YSI's 'EcoMapper' a remote control underwater
vehicle for plotting water quality and bathymetry over wide areas,
has been made available for hire by UK company YSI Hydrodata.
YSI Regional Manager Ian Thompson says, "This highly advanced
monitoring technology comes with a 6-figure price tag, so it will
be outside the reach of many water monitoring practitioners. However,
we have been running training courses around the world and there
is a tremendous demand for the system because of its unique capabilities,
so we are offering the unit for short-term hire, subject to certain
terms and conditions."
The 'EcoMapper' is a unique remote monitoring system which only
requires one person to deploy and retrieve, has integrated water
quality sensors, intuitive mission planning software, and weighs
less than 21Kg. It is ideal for routine mapping of lakes, reservoirs,
rivers, estuaries and near-coastal environments.
The EcoMapper dataset is also unique, offering extremely high spatial
resolution of the key physicochemical water quality parameters in
addition to chlorophyll and blue-green algae fluorometers, a depth
sounder and optional side-scan sonar. Typical vehicle speeds are
2-4 knots and mission times can range up to 10 hours, providing
detailed maps of water quality and bathymetry.
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