Advances in Estimating Suspended-Sediment Concentration From Multiple-Frequency, Downlooking Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers: Missouri River Focus

WOOD, MOLLY; SZUPIANY, RICARDO NICOLÁS; BOLDT, JUSTIN; LANDERS, M; OBERG, KEVIN; LOPEZ WEIBEL, CECILIA

Rio de Janeiro

Simposio; 3rd Acoustics in Underwater Geosciences Symposium (RIO Acoustics 2017); 2017

The use of sidelooking acoustic Doppler velocity meters(ADVMs) to estimate fluvial suspended-sediment concentrations (SSC) by the U.S.Geological Survey has become more operational in recent years; however, directtransfer of these techniques to downlooking acoustic Doppler current profilers(ADCPs) currently is not feasible. The use of ADCPs to estimate SSC has beeninvestigated by other researchers, but the requirements and limitations of anoperational method that could be successfully applied at many locations are notwell defined. In order to evaluate the efficacy of using ADCPs of multiple frequenciesto estimate SSC, a dataset was collected on the Missouri River at St. Charles,Missouri, in July 2016. The Missouri River dataset is being compared to similardatasets to determine: 1) what factors influence successful use of downlookingADCPs to estimate SSC, 2) what are the minimum datasets required to develop SSCcalibrations, and 3) what modifications are needed to existing methods,instruments, and software tools.