German researchers set up the miniBAT, a sensor platform from which the water environment is monitored.

A Sino-German research team, consisting of 4 scientists from Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) in Germany (led by Prof. Stefan Norra) and 4 researchers from Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB), set off on July 4 to conduct a field survey of the ecology environment of the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. This survey will last till the end of this month.  

This one-month survey will be mainly carried out in Yidu, a county-level city in western Hubei Province and Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province. Using the internationally advanced miniBAT, a sensor platform from which the water environment is monitored, the research team thoroughly scanned the Yangtze River and captured the real-time dynamic data of the ecology environment of waters and obtained the hydrodynamic images of water quality of the Yangtze. 

This survey aims at revealing the biological and geo-chemical circulation of rivers under the interaction of the main streams and tributaries of the Yangtze; Getting insight into the physiological, chemical and biological characteristics of the Yangtze; understanding the condition of water environment of the Yangtze; analyzing the migration and transformation of various pollutants; discovering the underlying coupling mechanisms of the main streams and tributaries of the Yangtze; discussing the interaction of the main streams and tributaries of the Yangtze as well as the effect of specific pollution sources (i.e. industrial, agricultural and domestic wastewaters) on the ecological environment of the Yangtze. It is hoped that this survey can provide fundamental data and feasible schemes for the conservation of the ecological environment of the Yangtze.  

This survey is supported by the Sino-German Intergovernmental S&T Cooperation Program. 

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