Putting New Tech to the Test

Ohio’s Old Woman Creek Reserve has become a testing ground for innovative technology designed to make water quality monitoring faster, more affordable, and more accessible for scientists and resource managers as they track harmful algal blooms (HABs) across the Great Lakes. 

Located along the shores of Lake Erie, the Reserve sits in a watershed heavily influenced by agriculture and stormwater. Runoff carries excess nutrients into the lake, fueling harmful algal blooms, which can threaten drinking water supplies, recreation, and the health of local fisheries. 

“Public awareness of water quality intensified during the 2014 Toledo Water Crisis,” says Steven McMurray, the Reserve’s research coordinator. “Toxins produced by cyanobacteria contaminated the city’s drinking water supply and forced officials to temporarily shut down a water treatment system that served hundreds of thousands of residents.” 

In response to these growing concerns about water quality, the Reserve began working closely with Cleveland Water Alliance to evaluate emerging monitoring technologies. Since 2021, they have tested lower-cost and experimental sensors alongside the Reserve’s established System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) stations.

“Old Woman Creek Reserve has been a fundamental partner in helping us test and advance technology,” says Samantha Martin, Director of Communications and Engagement at Cleveland Water Alliance. “The location is perfect for tech deployments, offering a wide range of lake conditions to stress test these innovations out of a lab environment. The team at the Reserve also has a wealth of expertise in water management, sharing feedback, best practices, and considerations with our innovators.”

This collaboration addresses a practical challenge facing wetland and water-quality managers: how to make high-quality environmental sensors affordable enough to monitor large numbers of wetlands and waterways. As Ohio expanded its wetland restoration efforts through the H2Ohio initiative, Reserve staff recognized the need for more affordable monitoring tools that could still produce reliable data. 

One of the most promising efforts involved a rapid, portable toxin detection system developed in collaboration with LightDeck Diagnostics, Bowling Green State University, and University of Toledo. Using water samples collected from SWMP stations, researchers tested a field-based system capable of detecting cyanobacterial toxins in less than 10 minutes. Traditionally, water samples are transported to laboratories for analysis, delaying results and limiting how quickly managers can respond to changing conditions. Portable systems like this could eventually provide earlier warnings for harmful algal blooms across the Great Lakes region.

The Reserve also tested winter water-quality monitoring technologies that can operate beneath lake ice, eliminating the need to remove sensors during colder months, and drone-based water sampling systems capable of reaching habitats that are otherwise difficult to access. 

“It was a great experience. Finding a place like the Old Woman Creek and having access to an estuary, to a Great Lake… it was a perfect testbed,” says Jeff Tingley, Business Development Executive at CSignum, the tech company that developed the winter monitoring system. “We got to see how the tech performed, and they got to see how the data changed over the seasons. It was the right partners with the right application, with the right team.”

“This year, we will evaluate additional technologies, including novel E. coli sensors that could help identify contamination sources within the watershed,” says McMurray. “We hope that these tools will eventually support local management decisions and infrastructure improvements in communities with failing septic systems.”

By serving as a living laboratory for emerging technologies, the Old Woman Creek Reserve is helping advance smarter, faster, and cheaper approaches to protecting freshwater ecosystems across the world.

Photos courtesy of Steven McMurray.