The ponds are instrumented with a pump-profiling device built by the Marine Science Machine Shop. We affectionately call this device BORIS (Big Ol' Rig In Situ) . BORIS consists of a suite of eight inlets through which water is pumped from various levels in the ponds relative to the sediment water interface. Water is pumped from one level, through a YSI 6600 sonde with multiple probes. After four minutes (to ensure complete flushing of the water from the previous level), chemical measures are made and temperatures are measured by thermistors attached to each of eight inlet levels. All measures are logged on a Data Collection Platform at the waters edge. Every half hour, the DCP is queried by the computer server and the data are posted to the website. Thus the chemodynamics and the temperature structure of the pond are available in near real-time. This allows us to check the operation of the instrument and to plan additional wet sample collection coincident with unusual and/or specific conditions.

The residence time of water in a pond is critical to its chemical performance as a retention device. Therefore, outflow from Mirror and Swan Ponds are monitored by stage gages, which measure the height of the water surface relative to the outlet.

Because weather conditions directly control the thermal structure of the pond, and therefore its operation as a stratified or unstratified system, a complete weather station has been outfitted and also delivers weather data directly to the website. This weather station is also used in conjunction to a small watershed hydrology project that can be found at www.mypond.uconn.edu.