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The Nuts and Bolts of a Near-Real-Time Suspended-Sediment Discharge Monitoring Station in the Hudson River Estuary, New York.
Author(s) Wall, G. R., U.S. Geological Survey
Nystrom, E. A., U.S. Geological Survey
Type Oral
Session SPS-13 - Observing and Forecasting Systems for Urban and Coastal Ocean Environments
Time & Place Thursday, 03:15 pm in Marriot Room 6 (subject to change)
 
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, has maintained an upward-looking acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) in the Hudson River Estuary since March 2002 to estimate suspended-sediment discharge. The ADCP transmits data to a shore-based shelter in real time using a directional acoustic modem in series with a spread-spectrum radio modem. ADCP data, as well as atmospheric data collected at the site, are stored electronically for no more than 4 hours, after which automated procedures upload the data via phone line, process the data, and produce plots of sediment concentration and load and other data for the World Wide Web (http://ny.water.usgs.gov/projects/poused/index.html). Periodic maintenance (2 or 3 times per year) requires the redeployment of the instrument platform which is complicated by the need to orient the acoustic modem in 20 meters of water without the use of divers toward a shore-based receiving modem. The details of equipment deployment and recovery, data transfer, and processing will be discussed along with the benefits of near-real-time data of this kind.