Suspended Sediment Surrogate Technology Study on the Clearwater and Snake Rivers

Conducted in cooperation with US Corps of Engineers

Status: Active

USGS employee sampling Clearwater River from cableway.

Introduction

Elevated levels of fluvial sediment can reduce the biological productivity of aquatic systems, impair freshwater quality, and decrease reservoir storage capacity. The need to safely and cost-effectively measure sediment in the Nation's streams has led to the advancement of sediment surrogate technologies, which allow the indirect measurement of sediment through a relation with a parameter that is easier to measure. Effective surrogate technologies are low-maintenance and robust over a range of hydrologic conditions, and measured parameters can be modeled to estimate sediment concentration and duration of elevated levels on a real-time basis. Some of the most promising surrogate technologies include:

acoustic Doppler velocity meters
laser diffraction particle analyzer instruments
optical turbidity monitors

The USGS Idaho Water Science Center, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District, is using surrogate technologies to predict suspended sediment concentrations in the Clearwater River at Spalding, ID and Snake River near Anatone, WA and to quantify sediment transport to Lower Granite Reservoir.