Aquatic Habitat Bottom Classification Using ADCP
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 5
Abstract
Description of physical aquatic habitat often includes data describing distributions of water depth, velocity, and bed material type. Water depth and velocity in streams deeper than about 1 m may be continuously mapped using an acoustic Doppler current profiler from a moving boat. Herein we examine the potential of using the echo signal strength from the bed as an indicator of bed material type. Mean signal strength from soft muddy beds was consistently 10–20 dB lower than mean signal strength from noncohesive (gravel or sand) beds. Sand beds tended to have larger site-to-site variation (means −30 to −19 dB) than for fines (−43 to −38 dB) or gravel (−23 to −20 dB).
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Acknowledgments
Kent Deines and Doug Shields Sr. provided helpful suggestions and insights. Sam Testa and John Massey assisted with field data collection. Daniel Wren, Colin Rennie, Roger Kuhlne, and David Mueller read an earlier version of this paper and made many helpful suggestions.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 5 • May 2010
Pages: 336 - 342
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2009
Accepted: Oct 24, 2009
Published online: Nov 9, 2009
Published in print: May 2010
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