This article describes a new monitoring technology that may allow us to better track the sources and pathways of water and the things it carries along with it.
One area of technology that continues to develop and improve is computers, electronics, and the software that runs them. In particular, for the water world, the capabilities of relatively low cost environmental sensors continue to develop, and with them potential to make monitoring both less expensive and also to do things that are difficult or impossible with current techniques.
A fascinating combination of electronic sensors with biological engineering allows tracking the paths of water, and of possible contaminants in the water, through complex flow paths.
“If a stream becomes polluted, when will the pollutants reach a source of drinking water that the stream flows into? How much of this pollution makes it all the way downstream?
And when the pressure disappears from your tap because something is wrong with the water supply, where does the blockage or leak really reside?”
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-source-pollution-synthetic-dna-sand.html