GSC now has its own weather station

GAINESVILLE - Gainesville State College (GSC) is now home to one of 81 weather stations in the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network (AEMN).

The GSC, Oakwood, Hall County weather station is located on the northern side of the campus in an open area and was established on December 1.

Dr. Sudhanshu Panda, Assistant Professor of GIS/Environmental Science joined the GSC faculty in 2006 and he along with Dr. Jon Hoekstra, Associate Professor of Biology worked on acquiring the weather station for the College.

Panda was instrumental in putting the GSC weather station into the AEMN network for its real-time access. From his past experience, he knew that real-time data would enhance the learning experience for the students. He is now seeing just how effective the data taken from the weather station is to both the teaching and learning experience at GSC.

"The real-time and historical data from the GSC weather station including other AEMN weather stations are being used by students of Hydrology, Fundamentals of Soil Science, and Weather and Climatology classes to develop precipitation, soil moisture, and other weather related models using geospatial technology," said Panda. "Development of recent drought index map of Georgia is one example of such models developed by students."

The weather station is used as a major teaching and research tool for the Bachelor of Science in Applied Environmental Spatial Analysis (AESA). GSC's weather station has a few extra features to support the requirements of the AESA classes, including a United States Department of Agriculture Pan A Evaporimeter and an extra soil moisture probe.

The Georgia AEMN was established in 1991, according to the www.georgiaweather.net website, by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of the University of Georgia. The objective of the AEMN is to collect reliable weather information for agricultural and environmental applications.

Each station monitors air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction, soil temperature at 2-, 4-, and 8-inch depths, atmospheric pressure, and soil moisture every second. Data are summarized at 15-minute intervals, and at midnight a daily summary is calculated.

A microcomputer at the Georgia Experiment Station initiates telephone calls to each station periodically and downloads the recorded data. Many stations, including GSC (Oakwood) weather station, are connected to the microcomputer wirelessly through Wi-Fi to download the recorded data. The data are processed immediately and disseminated via the World Wide Web.

The GSC weather station was established through the funding from GSC's School of Science, Engineering, and Technology to support coursework such as Hydrology, Weather and Climate, and Fundamentals of Soil Science.

An individual with Georgia Experiment Station is responsible for the upkeep of all weather stations of the AEMN, including the GSC weather station.