ERDC's Environmental Laboratory developed the Submersed Aquatic Vegetation Early Warning System (SAVEWS™), a semi-automated acoustic-based measurement system that can detect and characterize submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) while operating from a small survey boat. It uses an off-the-shelf digital echo sounder, with a narrow single-beam high-frequency transducer, and global positioning system (GPS) equipment to digitally record echo intensity and position data on a laptop PC. SAVEWS™ is used to assess ecologically important SAV (such as seagrass), to detect early infestations of nuisance aquatic plants (enabling early, more economic treatment), and to conduct bathymetric surveys of the bottom underneath dense SAV. |
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