Abstract:
A field study was performed in the lower Hudson River, a partially mixed estuary with a relatively simple geometry
(Figure 1), between August and October of 1995. The objectives of the study were (1) to quantify and characterize the
turbulent transport of momentum and salt, and (2) to relate the turbulent transport processes to the local and estuary-wide
dynamics.
The measurement program consisted of fixed and shipboard components. At a central site, a moored array of
temperature-conductivity sensors and optical backscatter sensors (OBS), a bottom-mounted acoustic Doppler current
profiler (ADCP), and a bottom-mounted array of acoustic travel-time current sensors (BASS), temperature-conductivity
sensors, and OBS sensors resolved the vertical structure of velocity, salinity and turbidity and the near-bottom turbulence
structure. Moored and bottom-mounted velocity, temperature, conductivity and pressure sensors at five secondary sites
quantified the spatial and temporal variabilty of velocity, salinity and bottom pressure. Shipboard measurements with an
ADCP and a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) profiler, accompanied by an OBS sensor, resolved the spatial structure
and tidal variability of velocity, salinity and turbidity along several cross-channel and along-channel transects.
This report describes the measurements in detail. Section II describes the instrumentation, Section III describes the
deployment and sampling schemes, Section IV describes the data processing, and Section V is a summary of plots of
selected data. Section VI documents the data files and Sections VII and VII give acknowledgments and references.
