Moyola River High-Frequency Water Quality Measurements

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 measurements accurate to +/- 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 their correlation with oxygen saturation in a riverine environment.
• Developing anomaly detection models for sensor malfunction or environmental events based on provisional, real-time data.
• Calibrating or validating hydrological models using specific, instrument-grade accuracy metrics (+/- 0.1°C, +/- 5% saturation).

Strengths

• High-frequency temporal resolution with data recorded every 30 minutes.
• Provides instrument accuracy specifications: temperature +/- 0.1°C and dissolved oxygen +/- 5% saturation.
• Explicitly documents data update frequency (approximately monthly) and maintenance schedule.

Limitations

• Data is explicitly flagged as non-validated, provisional, and subject to revision.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total temporal coverage are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Collected by a deployed field probe with optical DO and temperature sensors.

Freshness

Data is updated approximately every 30 days; last metadata update was 2026-03-18.

Geography

Moyola River near Waterfoot Road, Northern Ireland.