Eco Detection’s Ion-Q+ technology is the most advanced and comprehensive water quality monitoring system in the market. Deploying Ion-Q+ across the inlet and outlet of a wetlands provides:
- An understanding of the dissolved N and P that is being taken up by the wetlands plants
- Great insight on how the wetlands is performing across the seasons and across the day
- Data to benchmark and compare wetlands design and nutrient absorption rates
- Valuable verifiable data for obtaining nutrient offset credits
Dr Amanda Whelan, TasWater Head of Operational Support and Improvement, from article on TasWater Wetlands Project in the Hobart Mercury, Feb 2025
The Challenges
Wetlands can provide water quality improvement through the plants removing nutrients and flood protection from the plant structure. Natural and man-made wetlands are commonly being introduced or restored for defined purposes.
The health and well being of the wetlands to ensure their ongoing sustainability requires monitoring of the feed water.
The biotic aspects of wetlands change throughout the seasons and across the day. For tertiary cleaning of wastewater, the inflow nutrient loads will also fluctuate during the day. The nutrient removal performance of the wetlands will therefore frequently change.
Obtaining lab grab samples from both the inlet and outlet of a wetlands can not only be challenge due to the inherent difficult access and natural wildlife but do so frequently and throughout the day to gain insightful operational performance data is borderline impossible.
The Solution
Eco Detection’s Ion-Q+ technology now provides high frequency, in-situ monitoring of wetlands in effectively real-time.
The Ion-Q+ analysis unit can be positioned approximately 50m from the nominated sampling point, enabling access to the wetland’s inlet and outlet for comparative analysis.
The remote solar option for the Ion-Q+ can ensure 4x samples per day, at any scheduled time, 365 days of the year.
The integration of other bulk water characteristics and flow data on Eco Detection’s visualisation platform can provide insightful nutrient load information for subsequent download and further interpretation.
The Benefits
Real-time monitoring
Providing higher frequency, in-situ data on wetlands performance in real-time.
Reduces safety risks
The in-situ Ion-Q+ sending monitoring data to the cloud reduces the associated risks of accessing wetlands inhabited with wildlife.
Improved understanding
Provides wetlands scientists with greater insight on the performance of a wetland with a range of dynamic inputs.
Supports sustainability
Enables base line data and ongoing nutrient removal amounts to be captured for nutrient load credits.
Cost-effective
Reduces the need for expensive, resource-intensive and time-consuming manual sampling and laboratory analysis.
Wastewater operation monitoring
The combination of inlet and outlet data enables wetlands performance to be captured for continuous improvement opportunities.