Lakes Go Digital: New Newsletter Highlights Smart Buoys and Lake Monitoring in Latvia and Lithuania
The third edition of the “Lakes Go Digital” newsletter has been published, bringing together the project’s key achievements and activities from recent months – from the installation and calibration of smart monitoring buoys in lakes across Latvia and Lithuania to public engagement and educational activities.
This edition focuses on how modern monitoring technologies can help us better understand freshwater ecosystems and provide municipalities and lake managers with reliable data for decision-making. Smart buoys continuously measure a range of important water quality indicators, including water temperature, electrical conductivity, chlorophyll and cyanobacteria concentrations, water level and other parameters.
The newsletter also explores ecosystem services – the many benefits that healthy lakes provide to both nature and society. Lakes support biodiversity, contribute to local climate and water regulation, provide opportunities for recreation and form an important part of the living environment of local communities.
In the third newsletter, read more about:
- the installation of smart buoys in all six project lakes – Lakes Mastis and Germantas in Lithuania, and Lakes Lukna, Lielais Ludzas, Mičurinietis and Ciecere in Latvia, forming a cross-border real-time monitoring network;
- the 24-hour calibration campaign at Lake Mastis in Lithuania, where researchers from the Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology carried out water quality measurements and collected samples throughout the day and night to compare field observations with real-time data from the smart buoy and verify the accuracy of the monitoring system;
- educational activities at Lake Lukna, where LHEI scientists introduced 50 schoolchildren to smart monitoring technologies, water quality measurements, aquatic organism sampling and microscopy, while also discussing microplastic pollution and freshwater ecosystems;
- public engagement and citizen science, helping to make environmental monitoring more accessible and strengthen cooperation between researchers, municipalities and local communities;
- the project’s next steps, including continued collection and validation of real-time environmental data, improvement of monitoring methods, cooperation with municipalities and further public engagement and citizen science activities.
The Lakes Go Digital project is developing a cross-border smart lake monitoring network in Latvia and Lithuania. As more data are collected, the network will provide an increasingly detailed picture of water quality, lake ecological status and long-term environmental changes, while supporting evidence-based lake management.
We invite you to explore the third Lakes Go Digital newsletter and follow the latest developments of the project.
The Lakes Go Digital project is co-funded by the Interreg VI-A Latvia–Lithuania Programme 2021–2027.
