Washing Bay AquaTROLL: High-Frequency Water Quality Metrics from Lough Neagh

Northern Ireland's Lough Neagh near Rea's Wood, Antrim, is monitored by a buoy-mounted multiparameter sonde deployed by NIEA’s Freshwater Monitoring and Assessment Team. It records water temperature, dissolved oxygen, phycocyanin, turbidity, and specific conductivity every 30 minutes as part of a long-term project. Data is provisional, non-validated, and uploaded with a short delay to the Lough Neagh water quality platform.

Use Cases

• Modeling diurnal and seasonal water temperature cycles based on 30-minute interval data.
• Monitoring algal bloom potential using phycocyanin fluorescence (RFU) measurements.
• Assessing water clarity and suspended solids through turbidity (NTU) readings.
• Analyzing dissolved oxygen saturation dynamics to infer ecosystem health.
• Tracking specific conductivity (µS/cm) variations as an indicator of dissolved ion concentrations.

Strengths

• High-frequency temporal resolution with data recorded every 30 minutes.
• Sensor accuracy specifications are provided for each measured parameter (e.g., temperature +/- 0.1°C).
• Part of a long-term monitoring project with regular probe maintenance every 4-6 weeks.

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 is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Deployed on a buoy with a multiparameter sonde collecting automated measurements.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 11:23:21.428392; data is uploaded with a short delay from the sensor.

Geography

Rea’s Wood bathing water site, Lough Neagh, Antrim, Northern Ireland.