Moyola River Water Quality Metrics: Dissolved Oxygen and Temperature

A field probe deployed by NIEA’s Freshwater Monitoring and Assessment team records Dissolved Oxygen (%Saturation) and temperature (°C) in the Moyola River near Waterfoot Road. Data is recorded every 30 minutes and loaded onto the public platform approximately every 30 days. The dataset is non-validated and provisional, with sensor accuracy of +/- 5% for oxygen and +/- 0.1°C for temperature.

Use Cases

• Modeling diurnal and seasonal dissolved oxygen cycles based on high-frequency 30-minute measurements.
• Analyzing water temperature trends and thermal pollution events in the Moyola River.
• Calibrating or validating other water quality models using the specified sensor accuracy ranges.
• Monitoring for potential hypoxic events based on dissolved oxygen saturation levels.

Strengths

• High-frequency temporal resolution with measurements taken every 30 minutes.
• Sensor accuracy is specified as +/- 5% for dissolved oxygen and +/- 0.1 degrees C for temperature.
• Data is part of a long-term monitoring project, suggesting a continuous time-series.

Limitations

• Data is explicitly noted as non-validated and provisional, subject to revision.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Reliability may be affected by environmental changes and sensor malfunction as noted in the disclaimer.

Provenance

Source

NIEA’s Freshwater Monitoring and Assessment team, published via OpenDataNI.

Collection Method

Collected by an in-situ field probe with optical DO and temperature sensors.

Freshness

Data is updated approximately monthly; last metadata update was 2026-03-18.

Geography

Moyola River near Waterfoot Road, Northern Ireland.