The American River basin is set to host a large-scale research project involving wireless sensors that will help flood-control managers, farmers and scientists get a much more detailed picture of the amount of water in the basin for homes, businesses, crops and power generation.

The unique project marks a big step toward a statewide water-monitoring system, according to the University of California Merced, whose researchers are working on the American River basin system.

The project involves installing low-cost wireless sensors throughout the basin, which serves the Sacramento metro area. The sensors will give continuous information about how much water is available to users.

The system, which is being used in the Sierra Nevada, could go live as early as January 2013, according to the university.

“Our research provides a template for the next-generation water system for California,” UC Merced lecturer and researcher Robert Rice said in a news release. “We will be able to accurately know the amount of snow across the Sierra Nevada, as well as the timing and magnitude of snowmelt, which provides our water.”

Early research was conducted by professor Roger Bales, director of UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute, near Shaver Lake. The American River basin project will be much larger.

“We’re going from monitoring a 5-square-kilometer area to a 5,000-square-kilometer area in one big jump,” engineering professorMartha Conklin said in the news release. “It’s a full-basin hydrologic observatory, and a prototype water information system.”

The National Science Foundation granted $2 million for the monitoring systems’ construction and installation. The data will be streamed online and available to the public.

More at BizJournals.com >>>