Field intercomparison of Channel Master ADCP with RiverSonde radar for measuring river discharge

Abstract

The RiverSonde radar makes non-contact measurement of a horizontal swath of surface velocity across a river section. This radar, which has worked successfully at several rivers in the western USA, has shown encouraging correlation with simultaneous measurements of average currents at one level recorded by an acoustic travel-time system. This work reports a field study intercomparing data sets from a 600 kHz Channel Master ADCP with the RiverSonde radar. The primary goal was to begin to explore the robustness of the radar data as a reliable index of discharge. This site is at Three Mile Slough in northern California, USA. The larger intent of the work is to examine variability in space and time of the radar's surface currents compared with subsurface flows across the river section. Here we examine data from a couple of periods with strong winds.