Ranger III

The M/V Ranger III carries park visitors to and from Isle Royale National Park twice weekly between May and September, providing an ideal platform for regular time-series data collection. The information collected could greatly benefit climate, ecological, and biogeochemical research on Lake Superior. A major problem in studying large ecosystems such as Lake Superior is the need for spatial coverage to complement time-series data from weather buoys. Presently, time series data for only a few parameters are collected in offshore waters. Synoptic spatial surveys of the lake are limited to a few variables measured by satellite or infrequent ship based surveys. The Ranger III crosses a central basin, providing both time series measurements as well as spatial coastal and deep-water coverage.

Accomplishments

The most desirable design would meet these requirements:

• Minimal changes to the ship or ship systems
• Distributed instrument packages and displays
• Extensible to other sensors without modification
• Easy adaptation to other vessels and sensing missions

The system meets all of its intended goals:

• Integral Internet in every package makes them very modular
• Local logging of data in every package make data recovery robust, even in the presence of various system component failures
• Single-button operation for ease of use
• Integrated web-server and collection software for logging and outreach
• Current sensor head is a YSI 6600 with temperature, conductivity, pH, turbibity, and chlorophyll sensors.

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For Additional Information

Chris Roussi
Senior Research Scientist / Engineer
734.913.6843
croussi@mtu.edu

Next Steps The system is operating on the Ranger III at this time with an updated design. At the end of the each trip, the collected data are transmitted to MTRI via Internet for further analysis and posting to a collaborative website.