The Experimental Lakes Area near Vermillion Bay is using some of the funding announced last week for new water monitoring equipment.
Matt McCandless is executive director of the ELA and say it will allow then to continue to check on the lakes, even when they are closed down, like during COVID.
“This funding will allow us to bring on some new equipment that will reduce amount of time that people need to spend collecting water data,” says McCandless.
“So that will allow us to do more work remotely, so if there is another shutdown, like there was, it shouldn’t upend research quite as much.”
McCandless says the new monitoring equipment can look at a number of different points of data.
“We’ll be able to see what is happening in the lakes, how the water chemistry, temperature and things like that are changing, without having to go there and take measurements. We’ll be able to do it remotely.”
The ELA is receiving almost $150,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to help it recover from COVID.