Project Descriptions
Our client, Dr. Kimberly Samuels-Crow, is a geochemist who is employed as an assistant research professor at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems here at NAU. She is currently the principal investigator in an NSF (National Science Foundation) funded study of evapotranspiration, which is the process of water moving from soil or plants into the atmosphere. Our client’s current research is improving the understanding of the environmental drivers of evaporation and transpiration in six semi-arid ecosystems in New Mexico. She is interested in reading the different isotopic signatures of water vapor within the ecosystem in order to categorize that vapor as evaporation or transpiration. Currently, she has an instrument that makes real-time measurements of the stable isotopic composition of water vapor coupled with an inlet capable of switching between source elevations. Our project is to automate the aforementioned inlet so that measurements at different depths can be made remotely and at any time. By April, the product should be ready to be deployed in real time and function without human intervention for at least one week. The product should attach to the instrument with plug and play wiring and software that always works and has a GUI for setup. The project should work for the next four years. Wireless communication should provide updates on data collection and status. The plans should allow other researchers to repeat the fabrication of the instrument as well.
The study of stable isotopes of water is primarily focused on reading the different isotopic signatures of water vapor within an ecosystem in order to categorize whether the vapor entered the atmosphere via evaporation or transpiration. This analysis is conducted by using the different elemental isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen. Because different isotopes of these elements change the mass of a water molecule, reading the percentages of each stable isotope composition in water vapor can provide insight whether the vapor was released from the evaporation of surface water, or transpired from deep without the soil by the plant roots and evaporated off leaves or the plant. Currently, our client has an instrument that makes real-time measurements of the isotopic composition of water vapor being passed through its inlet. She intends to take measurements at different elevations within the ecosystem which requires manual adjustment of what is being passed into the inlet of her instrument each time that she wants to change what she is measuring.
Dr. Kimberly Ellen Samuels-Crow is a geochemist who is employed as an assistant research professor at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University. She is currently the principal investigator in an NSF (National Science Foundation) funded study of evapotranspiration, which is the process of water moving from soil or plants into the atmosphere. To accomplish her work, she uses an isotopic water analyzer. This analyzer requires special considerations as any condensed vapor will cause irreparable damage to the instrument.
She has asked our capstone team to design an automated valve that can attach to her instrument’s inlet so that she may control what elevation the instrument is sampling from a remote location. She has also requested that we find a means to deploy her vapor analysis equipment, as well as our automated valve, so that it operates off of its own power supply and transmits her instrument’s output readings from the field to her lab. Lastly, she would like a “DIY” document that other researchers in her field could use to replicate our project with ease. A successful project will mean that she can deploy all of the equipment into the field with remote control, its own power source, and remote observation without needing to service it physically as well as providing a document that enables her colleagues to repeat the work that we have done.