Excellence in Research: Integrated Sensor-Robot Networks for Real-time Environmental Monitoring and Marine Ecosystem Restoration in the Hampton River

Estuaries are bodies of water where rivers meet the ocean. They are among the most productive environments on earth, creating more organic matter each year than forest and agricultural areas of similar sizes. Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuarine system in the United States, spanning over 64,000 square miles in six states (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York) and Washington DC.

It plays a critical role in the region’s environment, food, economy, and recreation. Rapid industrialization and increased pollution caused by excessive nutrient offloading from industrial activities and agricultural runoff, as well as over fishing, are imposing severe threat to the marine ecosystem, wildlife fisheries, and oyster population in the Bay, and in the Hampton River, our study site.

These critical environmental challenges call for advanced scientific methods and engineering solutions to fully understand the dynamic biochemical conditions of the water system where the marine ecosystem reside and grow so that effective decisions for resource management, wildlife protection, and ecosystem restoration can be made. This project aims to develop an integrated biochemical sensor-robot network, coupled with intelligent data sampling schemes, environmental modeling, and sensor-robot control methods, for real-time proactive environmental sensing and marine ecosystem restoration in the Hampton River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

The research team will explore a joint design of static sensor networks and mobile aquatic robots to provide proactive biochemical sensing of the dynamic water condition at large scales in space and time. Specific research objectives include (1) biogeochemical sensor-robot network design, intelligent sampling, and data analysis; (2) machine learning methods and data-driven models for marine species density and growth estimation; (3) optimal navigation, path planning, and robust control of aquatic robots for effective mobile sensing; and (4) field deployment and performance evaluations.

This project will develop and demonstrate a new and highly effective approach for large-scale proactive environmental sensing, providing critical data and models for informed decision making in pollution control, water system management, and marine ecosystem restoration in the Hampton River and Chesapeake Bay. This project serves the long-term goal of building the research capacity and increasing the number of students in STEM at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Since Hampton University (HU) is a private HBCU, this project will provide unique and exciting opportunities for mentoring graduate and undergraduate students, for research in an interdisciplinary environment. The research will provide valuable water quality, oyster growth and ecosystem restoration data, and information for peer researchers and the general public.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.