The Federal Interagency Sedimentation Project (FISP) was founded in 1939 to standardize sediment sampler instrumentation, sampling methods, and sediment sample laboratory analysis processes. The project expanded over the many years of its operation to include automatic samplers, surrogate instrumentation such as acoustics and turbidity meters, water quality samplers, and much more. This session will cover the history, achievements, and current projects the FISP is working on.
Precipitation is a challenging parameter to model and measure accurately, making in situ observations from networks, like the approximately 3,400 USGS precipitation stations, especially valuable. Ensuring the accuracy of these observations is critical, particularly because provisional data is made publicly available in near real time. Station measurements are affected by various types of errors, several of which occur randomly in an unpredictable manner. The DRIP application is a threshold-based tool that leverages existing NOAA and USGS data to automatically identify potentially anomalous measurements to help maximize station uptime, prevent skewing of precipitation totals, and streamline field response.
In this session we’ll cover the progression of sediment science in the USGS, its uses, importance, and challenges to collect this data. We’ll also cover the current state of sediment science, field support resources, and vision of the future of sediment science in the USGS.
This session introduces the Flow Photo Explorer (FPE)—a USGS tool that uses time-lapse trail camera images to estimate relative streamflow dynamics, especially in ungagged streams and now deployed at 600+ locations. We’ll show how simple imagery can be turned into flow models and highlight ongoing work expanding these methods. The session includes a live demo of the platform so you can see how it works in practice, along with examples of where it’s been useful and what’s coming next.
