In 2008, an environmental observing program was established on the Hudson River Estuary from Troy south to the New York/New Jersey Harbor to provide geographically distributed high frequency real-time data. The Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System (HRECOS) is operated by a consortium of many partners from government and the research community who together are operating and maintaining several observing stations along the estuary and are providing these data real-time.

Read a Poughkeepsie Journal article about the project.

HRECOS has been designed to achieve the following objectives:

• Identify and address the needs of multiple users of the Hudson River Estuary ecosystem;



• Build upon existing monitoring and observing activities and capacities on the Hudson River estuary already established through the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (Columbia University), Stevens Institute, and others;



• Improve the capacity of governmental and research entities to manage river and estuarine resources and to understand the ecosystem; these entities include the state’s Hudson River Estuary Program, the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve, and the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Program;



• Provide a backbone of basic monitoring datasets and products necessary for applied research, modeling, and future technological innovation;



• Provide government, policy makers, and the public with timely datasets and data products to guide decision making; and



• Support the use of scientific data and real time information in educational settings.