Extending spatial reach

Sample beyond the shoreline.

TRACE-E 120 extends sampling and monitoring into open water, soft banks, industrial frontage and other difficult-to-access areas. Operated manually or along planned routes and transects, it collects samples and geospatial data across areas that are difficult to cover from the bank.

Discuss a survey See a mission

The problem

Sampling happens where people can reach.

Which is not always the same as where the science requires. Access can shape sampling plans, so a lake may be sampled from the easiest bank and a route may follow where people can safely reach rather than where the question leads.

Reaching further out often means a boat and crew, turning a routine sample into a planned operation with additional cost, logistics and risk. That can limit how often spatial sampling is carried out.

There is also a gap between the sample points themselves. When teams move between locations on foot, little or no data is collected about the water body in between. TRACE-E can collect a continuous stream of geospatial and physicochemical data as it moves, adding environmental context between discrete or integrated sampling points.

TRACE-E 120 out on open water, seen across reeds from a distant bank.
Side view of the TRACE-E 120 on hard standing, deck hatches and sample canister rack visible.
The TRACE-E 120 loaded with its rack of sample bottles and filter housings, an operator working at the open deck.
Spatial

TRACE-E 120

A remotely operated or route-driven surface vessel that extends sampling and monitoring across the water body.

Depending on the fitted payload, TRACE-E 120 can collect up to five 2-litre samples and return them for downstream processing. Sample positions can be assigned individually or grouped as field replicates.

As it moves between sampling points, TRACE-E can also collect geospatial and physicochemical data, building environmental context across the route rather than only at the discrete sample locations.

  • Up to 5 × 2L samples per mission, depending on payload
  • Configure samples as individual locations or field replicates
  • Plan routes and sampling points, then repeat them consistently
  • Collect geospatial and physicochemical data while moving between sample locations
  • Recovered samples enter the same downstream processing workflow
  • Extend sampling onto the water without putting personnel on it

See it working

A survey, start to finish.

Launch from the bank, follow a planned route across open water, collect samples at defined points, then recover the vessel, with environmental and geospatial data logged throughout the mission.

A mission

Discrete or integrated samples, with multifaceted data between them.

TRACE-E can collect discrete samples at defined points or integrated samples across a route. Onboard instruments log physicochemical, geospatial and other sensor data throughout the mission, so each sample can be interpreted alongside the wider environmental context.

Mission data can then be uploaded to the EASI Dashboard for review, visualisation and analysis.

Survey planning view showing two USV tracks across a lough, with numbered section positions, launch points, non-navigable zones, and per-track statistics for fixes, duration, sections and pumping time.

Want to reach further?

Tell us the water body and the question you are trying to answer.

We can help determine whether TRACE-E is the right approach for extending spatial sampling and monitoring.

Talk to the team Water monitoring

Where surveying is applied

Questions that need coverage, not a point.

A river running between densely wooded banks, the gravel bed visible through clear turquoise water.

Microbial Source Tracking

Sampling a spread of points across a water body narrows where contamination is entering, rather than confirming that it has.

Explore MST
An American mink emerging from a gap between limestone boulders on a riverbank.

Invasive & Non-Native Species

Establishing whether a species is present across a whole water body, including the margins and inlets a bankside survey never reaches.

Explore INNS
A peacock butterfly feeding on grape hyacinth flowers in spring sunshine.

Biodiversity & eDNA

Repeatable transects across a lake or estuary, so a campaign can be compared season to season rather than site visit to site visit.

Explore solutions