Aquatic Habitat Bottom Classification Using ADCP

Abstract

Description of physical aquatic habitat often includes data describing distributions of water depth, velocity, and bed material type. Water depth and velocity in streams deeper than about 1 m may be continuously mapped using an acoustic Doppler current profiler from a moving boat. Herein we examine the potential of using the echo signal strength from the bed as an indicator of bed material type. Mean signal strength from soft muddy beds was consistently 10–20 dB lower than mean signal strength from noncohesive (gravel or sand) beds. Sand beds tended to have larger site-to-site variation (means −30 to −19 dB) than for fines (−43 to −38 dB) or gravel (−23 to −20 dB).