Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-31-2020

Abstract

A system comprised of software and on-site measurements is presented for accurately obtaining water stage data from vented or non-vented submersible pressure sensors installed at autonomous stream gauging stations. The system accounts for pressure sensor offset errors, water density, and local gravitational acceleration to produce a stage height reading which is accurate to either ±0.01 ft (±3 mm) or to the accuracy limit of the sensor, whichever is greater. A 2nd order polynomial expression for determination of water density from temperature and salinity is developed and found to be sufficiently accurate for this purpose. Simulated stage measurements performed in the laboratory with a commercially produced sensor showed errors of up to ±0.04 ft in reported stage when the sensor’s default conversion from pressure to depth was used; the maximum error limit was reduced to ±0.02 ft when the sensor output was instead processed using the new system. A custom-designed, low-cost, versatile submersible pressure sensor is introduced and tested under the same conditions and found to exhibit a maximum error of ±0.04 ft without any sensor calibration. These new developments, integrated into previously developed inexpensive base stations, enable accurate monitoring of stage height at remote locations with low installation and operating costs.

Comments

© 2020 ISEIS All rights reserved. doi:10.3808/jeil.202000045.

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Informatics Letters

DOI

10.3808/jeil.202000045

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.