In collaboration with Duke’s River Center, a team of students will use remote sensing, in-situ water quality data, and machine learning algorithms to detect saltwater intrusion in coastal rivers. As sea levels rise, coastal waterways will become increasingly saline, threatening freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services. Students will develop a harmonized dataset of public coastal water quality data. Then, using this dataset, students will test different techniques to link on the ground salinity data with satellite imagery, to create a model that can predict the salinity of waterways from remote sensing data. This work will help develop a new tool to monitor changes of costal ecosystems as sea levels rise.
Project Leads: Emily Bernhardt, Ryan Emanuel
Project Manager: Spencer Rhea
