A dye tracer study was completed on the lower Sandusky River between July 11-13, 2017, during a confirmed Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) spawning event downstream of Ballville Dam near Fremont, Ohio. The data contained in this data release include three-dimensional water-velocity data and discharge measurements collected using acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) deployed from two U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) survey boats stationed on the river during the study. Each boat was equipped with a 1200 kHz Teledyne RDI Rio Grande ADCP and differential Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver with sub-meter accuracy in horizontal position using the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) differential correction. Each survey boat was also equipped with a submersible fluorometer providing in-situ, real-time dye concentration.
At 8:54 am Eastern Standard Time on July 11, 2017, 13.5 liters of Rhodamine WT dye in a 20-percent solution was injected into the Sandusky River at the Tiffin Road bridge crossing (41.327110, -83.130339). After the injection, the survey vessels monitored the downstream transport of the dye plume while collecting water velocity and discharge data. The first boat (boat 1 ‘Kishwaukee’) collected moving-boat discharge measurements and continuously recorded ADCP data while transiting between discharge measurement cross-sections. The second boat (boat 2 ‘Sangamon’) continuously recorded ADCP data while following a serpentine route upstream and downstream through the dye plume. The boats tracked the plume until the dye concentration was no longer measurable or discernable from the background fluorescence in the water.
These data are provided in: (1) "SanduskyADCP_ASCII.zip", which is a zipped folder containing classic ascii output files exported from Teledyne RD Instrument’s WinRiver II software, and a README text file describing the file naming convention; (2) "SanduskyADCP_KML.zip", which is a zipped folder containing KML files containing the ship track data from each boat using the same file naming convention as the ASCII files; and (3) “SanduskyADCP_Discharge.zip”, which is a zipped folder containing QRev XML and MAT output files for each measurement and spreadsheet containing a summary of all the discharge measurements “SanduskyDye2017_Discharge_Summary.xlsx”. QRev is a program developed by the USGS to compute the discharge from a moving-boat ADCP measurement using data collected with any of the Teledyne RD Instrument (TRDI) or SonTek bottom tracking ADCPs. QRev is available free to the public at https://hydroacoustics.usgs.gov/movingboat/QRev.shtml. All coordinates given in this data release are in (latitude, longitude) pairs in decimal degrees with North and East defined as positive and referenced to the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum unless otherwise stated. All times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST) unless otherwise stated. Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government.