Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Try the next-generation Data Catalog at catalog-beta.data.gov and help shape it with your feedback.

Acoustic backscatter—Data and Python Code

Metadata Updated: January 20, 2026

These data were compiled for investigating the relationship between acoustic backscattering by riverbeds composed of various riverbed substrates (bed sediment), and for developing and testing a probabilistic model for substrate classification based on high-frequency multibeam acoustic backscatter. The model is described in Buscombe et al. (2017). The data consist of various quantities on coincident grids, from various sites along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, including water depth, bed roughness, the area (or footprint) of the acoustic beam, unfiltered and filtered backscatter magnitude, sediment classification (for each location, 1 of 5 sediment classes in a categorical scheme), and the probabilities for each of 5 classes considered by the model. Files are organized by site, themselves denoted by river mile (RM) which is the linear distance downstream of Lees Ferry, Arizona. The so-called unfiltered backscatter has been corrected for various water, sediment and acoustic variables that might cause backscatter to vary independent of bed sediment, but has not been corrected for the effects of topography. It is shown by Buscombe et al. (2017) that topography has a major influence of the relationship between backscatter magnitude and substrate. Therefore, the topographic effects on backscatter are filtered out, resulting in filtered, or 'compositional' backscatter which is more strongly related to substrate type, and therefore serves as the basic and input to the probabilistic substrate classification model.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date January 13, 2026
Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date January 13, 2026
Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2026
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/USGS_5aa2b99fe4b0b1c392ea2c4e
Data Last Modified 2020-08-27T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Datagov Dedupe Retained 20260120022016
Harvest Object Id 722b6abb-a653-49f8-9c77-f3bcc8d7a740
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -114.02379, 35.740126, -114.02379, 36.965854, -111.476798, 36.965854, -111.476798, 35.740126, -114.02379, 35.740126}
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a3691f7d4d0ca9b88731192154f6f648417c36296e5da138ea1ea03e1e734764
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -114.02379, 35.740126, -114.02379, 36.965854, -111.476798, 36.965854, -111.476798, 35.740126, -114.02379, 35.740126}

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.