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The interagency Sediment Acoustic Leadership Team (SALT) promotes and develops technical guidance and training for using acoustic instruments to measure aquatic sediment. The information provided will help potential users with decision support when selecting between four sediment-acoustics methods.

Acoustic instrumentation can be used to cost-effectively provide continuous and discrete estimates of suspended-sediment concentration (SSC), grain size, and load in fluvial systems at acceptable accuracy. Such estimates are essential for informed solutions to many sediment-related environmental, engineering, and land management concerns. 

There are four primary methods for measuring suspended sediment with acoustic instruments:

  1. Point acoustics
  2. Single frequency sidelooking acoustics
  3. Multifrequency sidelooking acoustics 
  4. Downlooking acoustics

The flowchart below helps with decision support when selecting the most applicable method depending on conditions on-site and desired temporal frequency. Learn more about different methods on the sediment acoustic methods tab.

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Flowchart Diagram for Selection of Sediment Acoustic Methods

 

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