Development and Field Evaluation of a Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Network System for Hydrological Monitoring of a Small Agricultural Watershed

Hydrological monitoring and real-time access to data are valuable for hydrological research and water resources management. In the recent decades, rapid developments in digital technology, micro-electromechanical systems, low power micro-sensing technologies and improved industrial manufacturing processes have resulted in retrieving real-time data through Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) systems. In this study, a remotely operated low-cost and robust WSN system was developed to monitor and collect real-time hydrologic data from a small agricultural watershed in harsh weather conditions and upland rolling topography of Southern Ontario, Canada. The WSN system was assembled using off-the-shelf hardware components, and an open source operating system was used to minimize the cost. The developed system was rigorously tested in the laboratory and the field and found to be accurate and reliable for monitoring climatic and hydrologic parameters. The soil moisture and runoff data for 7 springs, 19 summer, and 19 fall season rainfall events over the period of more than two years were successfully collected in a small experimental agricultural watershed situated near Elora, Ontario, Canada. The developed WSN system can be readily extended for the purpose of most hydrological monitoring applications, although it was explicitly tailored for a project focused on mapping the Variable Source Areas (VSAs) in a small agricultural watershed.