Fluvial suspended sediment characteristics by high-resolution, surrogate metrics of turbidity, laser-diffraction, acoustic backscatter, and acoustic attenuation

Sedimentation is a primary and growing environmental, engineering, and agricultural issue around the world. However, collection of the data needed to develop solutions to sedimentation issues has declined by about three-fourths since 1983. Suspended-sediment surrogates have the potential to obtain sediment data using methods that are more accurate, of higher spatial and temporal resolution, and with less manually intensive, costly, and hazardous methods. The improved quality of sediment data from high-resolution surrogates may inform improved understanding and solutions to sedimentation problems. The field experiments for this research include physical samples of suspended sediment collected concurrently with surrogate metrics from instruments including 1.2, 1.5, and 3.0 megahertz frequency acoustic doppler current profilers, a nephelometric turbidity sensor, and a laser-diffraction particle size analyzer. This comprehensive data set was collected over five storms in 2009 and 2010 at Yellow River near Atlanta, Georgia. Fluvial suspended sediment characteristics in this study can be determined by high-resolution surrogate parameters of turbidity, laser-diffraction and acoustics with model errors 33% to 49% lower than traditional methods using streamflow alone. Hysteresis in sediment-turbidity relations for single storm events was observed and quantitatively related to PSD changes of less than 10 microns in the fine silt to clay size range. Suspended sediment particle size detection (PSD) is significantly correlated with ratios of measured acoustic attenuation at different frequencies; however the data do not fit the theoretical relations. Using both relative acoustic backscatter (RB) and acoustic attenuation as explanatory variables results in a significantly improved model of suspended sediment compared with traditional sonar equations using only RB. High resolution PSD data from laser diffraction provide uniquely valuable information; however the size detection limits of the instrument is a significant limitation.