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The Alliance for Coastal Technologies (ACT) Workshop on
Trace Metal Sensors for Coastal
Monitoring
was convened April 11-13, 2005 at the Embassy Suites in Seaside, California. The
workshop was sponsored by ACT-Pacific Coast headquartered at MLML and maintaining a
collaborative partnership with MBARI. Invited participants were selected to include equal
representation from three population segments concerned with water resource quality and
included individual from academic research institutes, private sector companies and local, state
and federal resource managers. An opening reception was held for participants the first evening,
and G. Jason Smith, Technical Coordinator for the ACT-Pacific Coast Chapter provided an
introduction to the workshop and programmatic overview of the national ACT program.
The following morning, during the opening plenary session Co-Chairs, Drs. Al Hanson and
Kenneth Coale, provided an overview of the workshop goals. This introduction was followed by
three plenary talks (Appendix A) to set the stage for subsequent breakout session discussions. Dr.
Bobbye Smith, Regional Science Liaison to the USEPA Office of Research and Development
(ORD) for Region 9, provided an overview of EPA ORD's organization and research focus areas
as well as funding opportunities available through USEPA's extramural research programs STAR
(Science To Achieve Results) and SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research). While no
programs directly target funding for aquatic metal sensor development, several programmatic
technology needs were identified that may offer basic funding opportunities. Dr. Samuel
Kounaves, Tufts University Department of Chemistry, provided an overview of the history and
development future for
in situ
electrochemical sensors, providing much needed background for
the participants inexperienced in trace metal analysis. The session's final plenary talk was
provided by Dr. Al Hanson who discussed private sector interests in trace metal sensor
development. This emphasized the critical distinction between chemical
sensors
where the
analyte is measured directly without sample processing and chemical
analytical systems
which
incorporate a sample processing stream on board, and the associated R&D costs for
commercialization of
in situ
instrumentation.
For the remainder of the day two breakout working group discussion and summary sessions
focused on the role of
in situ
metal sensor systems for aquatic monitoring programs. After the
working sessions, a tour and dinner was hosted at MLML. Dr. George Luther, University of
Delaware, College of Marine Studies, provided an informative and entertaining after dinner talk
summarizing real world deployments of
in situ
voltammetric trace metal analysis in both
terrestrial and deep sea extreme environments. The data provided certainly indicated that a robust
and proven technology base is available for routine on site if not
in situ
metal speciation analysis.
A final plenary session was convened the following morning at the Embassy Suites. The session
was opened with a talk by Bridget Hoover, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, who
described the structure, training efforts and monitoring objectives of the Citizens Watershed
Monitoring Network program. This program represents an example of expanding nationwide
efforts to provide high quality regional WQ snapshots based completely on volunteer sampling
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TRUCTURE
ACT Workshop on Trace Metal Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4