ASSESSING THE SUSPENDED SEDIMENT CONCENTRATION BY MEANS OF ACOUSTIC DOPPLER ECHO PROFILING

To obtain valuable information about rivers and water courses, scientists and engineers often rely on monitoring stations. These monitoring stations allow to measure several quantities that play a role in hydroenvironmental problems. One of these key variables is the suspended sediment concentration (SSC). In this paper the application of an acoustic based method to determine the SSC in a river is presented. This method is founded on the sonar equation and uses the echo information from an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) to assess the SSC. The results from a monitoring station in the river Devoll in Albania are here presented and the method application is discussed. The advantages and disadvantages are highlighted and directions to improve the method are discussed.