Dynamics of the settling of the flocculated suspended particle matter in specific places of a modified estuary

THOMAS, LUIS P.; GUTIERREZ, MANUEL M; SZUPIANY, RICARDO N.; MARINO, BEATRIZ M.

Montevideo

Conferencia; INTERCOH 2017 - 14th International Conference on Cohesive Sediment Transport Processes; 2017

Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República

In estuaries, flocculation is a dynamically active process that is directly affected by the prevalent environmental conditions. Consequently, the floc properties continuously change, whichgreatly complicates the characterisation of the suspended particle matter. In this study, two techniques are combined to provide a solution to this problem.The challenge is to obtain the concentration and size profiles of suspended elements at selected sites using ADCP records and diffractometer measurements.The method based on the simultaneous backscatter records of 1200 and 600 kHzADCPs is highly effective for determining the size distributions in a non-intrusive way, and then the SPM flow. The diffractometer offer punctual results, which are especially useful for calibrating the ADCP backscatter intensity as a function of the SPM concentration, and providing complementary information on the sites where acoustic records are not available.