CEE 370 Lab Fall 2015

Lab Exercise #1: Measuring Streamflow

Objective:
Measure volumetric flow rate (Q) and mean velocity (v) of a stream.

Introduction:

Streamflow or volumetric flow rate/discharge is defined as the volume rate of flow

of water (including any sediment or other solids that may be dissolved or mixed
with it) (Buchanan and Somers, 1969). Hundreds of thousands of streamflow
measurements are done every year. They can be done on a wide array of water body
discharges, from still waters to floods. Since the flow velocity varies at different
points in a stream cross section, calculating the average velocity at many points
within that cross section is highly recommended.

There are numerous methods for measuring volumetric flow rate/discharge and
linear flow velocity in a water body. These include (the items in bold will be
completed during this lab):

1. Floating markers
2. Tracer dilution
3. Mechanical current-meters
4. Drogues
5. Acoustic current meters
6. Laser Doppler meters

Methods:

1. Floating Markers:

In a nutshell:
Used as a measure of the time it takes for an object to float a specified distance
downstream.

Commonly used items are oranges and lemons (biodegradable, highly visible, good
size), stress balls, and Frisbees.

Benefits: fast and convenient method

Drawbacks: can only measure the velocity of surface water, need to estimate mean
velocity using correction factor, accuracy

This method is considered to be one of the easiest methods to measure surface

velocity ( ) as the ratio of the travel distance to the travel time of the object
(Eq. 1).

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( ) = Eq. 1

Since surface velocities are typically higher than the mean velocity, a mean velocity
( ) is calculated using a correction factor (k) of 0.8 for rough beds and 0.9 for
smooth beds (Eq. 2). A correction factor of 0.85 is commonly used.

( ) =

Eq. 2

The discharge (volumetric flow rate, Q), is then calculated by multiplying the cross
sectional area (Across ) by the mean velocity (Eqs. 3 and 4).

Across (2 ) = Eq. 3

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( ) = Eq. 4

Procedure:

1. Choose a suitable reach (location) with minimum turbulence (have the

length be at least 3 times the width of the channel) and mark the start and
end points of your reach whereby travel time exceeds 20 seconds (See
diagram below).
2. Drop the object into the stream at the designated start point and
simultaneously start the timer. Stop the timer when the object reaches the
designated end point.
3. Record the time it took for the object to go from the start point to the end
point.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 at least three times to be able to get an average later on.
5. Measure stream width and depth across at least one cross section.
If possible, measure depth across the stream width at the start and
end points and average the two (if measuring one cross section,
choose the downstream side).
Use a marker rod, a yard or meter stick to measure the depth at
regular intervals across the system (at least 10).
6. Average your cross-sectional areas (A) to compute Q.

D2
D1 D3

W1
W2 2
W3
2. Tracer dilution (instantaneous):

In a nutshell:
Used as a measure of the downstream concentration of a tracer (known volume and
concentration) discharged/injected instantaneously (sudden/slug) upstream over
time until the concentration reaches the background level.

Criteria for a tracer in a tracer dilution method is that it (Rantz et al., 1982): 1)
readily dissolves in water; 2) is either absent or present at very low concentrations
in water; 3) is not decomposed, is not retained or absorbed by sediments, plants,
etc; 4) can be detected at low concentrations using simple methods; and 5) is
harmless. Common tracers include chloride (measuring conductivity) or organic
dyes such as rhodamine (detecting fluorescence).

Two methods:

-The constant rate method of injection method (not the focus of this lab): For
details on this method, visit: http://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1989/4187/report.pdf

-The instantaneous injection method: assesses longitudinal dispersion and general

mixing. By instantaneous injection upstream, downstream sampling will produce a
curve similar to the one portrayed in Figure 1. Calculating discharge from slug
injection involves integration, or calculating the area under the curve of
concentration vs. time (Eq. 5).

Figure 1. Concentration-time curve at downstream sampling site for a sudden-

injection of a tracer (Rantz et al., 1982).

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 3

( ) = = Eq. 5
0 ( )

where Ct is the concentration of the tracer solution injected into the stream; Vt is the
volume of the tracer solution injected into the stream; C is the measured tracer
concentration at a given time downstream; Cb is the background concentration of

the stream; and t is time. The terms ( ) is the total area under the
curve.

Benefits: does not require a large reservoir for tracer, suitable for remote sites,
fairly quick, inexpensive.
Drawbacks: sampling interval has to be short enough to catch the peak, tail might
be long due to eddies, tracer might be lost, incomplete mixing.

Procedure:
1. Prepare a salt solution with a known concentration of 1 kg of salt per 6 L of
water (done by TA).
2. Pour a known volume (100 mL) of prepared solution into a graduated
cylinder to be poured at a chosen reach.
3. Record background electrical conductivity and the water temperature using
a conductivity meter upstream (where the tracer will be injected).
4. Set up the conductivity meter probe at the downstream point, record
background conductivity and temperature, wait for tracer discharge.
5. Inject the known volume of salt solution instantaneously upstream.
6. Begin recording the time as well as the conductivity downstream at 3-second
intervals. Continue until the conductivity returns to background level.
7. Plot the salt wave (conductivity vs. time) and calculate the discharge.

3. Mechanical Current-Meter:

In a nutshell:

Relates rotational speed of the meter to linear flow velocity ==>rotational

(angular) velocity.

Benefits: decrease the impact on velocity measurement of turbulence

Drawbacks: depend on the precision of equipment

Procedure:
1. Decide on a cross section along the width of the stream channel and divide
this cross section into numerous vertical subsections (Figure 2).

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Figure 2. Vertical sub-sectioning of a river to determine discharge (obtained from USGS:
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/streamflow2.html)

2. In each vertical sub-section, measure the width and depth of the subsection to
determine the area (Eq. 3).
3. In each vertical subsection, decide the depth to measure the velocity (Figure 3):
a. In a deep stream subsection, the average velocity is estimated by the
average of velocities measured 20% depth (0.2D) and 80% depth (0.8D).
b. In a shallow stream subsection where measurement at two depths is
difficult, the average velocity is determined by measuring velocity at 60%
depth (0.6D)

0.6D 0.2D
0.8D

Figure 3. Schematic subsection of river to determine depth of velocity measurement

4. Place the current meter in the stream in one of the vertical subsections and reset
the current meter and your stopwatch to 0.
5. Start your stopwatch for a specified time period and record the number of
rotations on the meter. This is your water velocity at that subsection.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 at different vertical subsections.
7. The discharge in each subsection (Q1, Q2, Q3Qn) is computed by multiplying
the subsection area (A1, A2, A3An) by the measured velocity (v1, v2, v3vn)
(Eq. 4).
8. The total discharge is then computed by summing the discharge of each
subsection (Eq. 6).

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 = (1 1 ) + (2 2 ) + (3 3 ) + + ( ) = 1 +
2 + 3 + +
Eq. 6

Special Topics to include in the write-up

In-Situ
a) Comment on how velocity changes with position (depth, proximity to bank) in the
stream.
b) Which of your methods do you think is more accurate and why.
c) What are some of the real-world limitations of each method? Can you think of
examples where one method may be more appropriate than the other?

Ex-Situ
1. Go to the National Water Information System website:
(http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis).
2. Select the blue bubble entitled Surface Water. This will bring you to a page
that contains all the surface water data measurements USGS has for the nation (some of
these data are real time, but a majority of these data are measured by gages that are not
updated in real time).
3. Look for the Fort River gage to do the analysis. Select the blue bubble entitled
Daily Data (this will bring up a page with check boxes).
4. Check the box State/Territory under the Site Location Field and click
submit. (This will help us narrow down our search for the Fort River gage).
5. Select Massachusetts from the State/Territory box and scroll down the page
to look over all the parameters the USGS measures (at some point in your career, class
work, or research, you may need to find similar data).
6. Look of the parameter Streamflow, ft3///s and check this box (it is under
the Water Level/Flow Parameters about two thirds down the page) then scroll all the way
down to the bottom of the page and click submit.
7. A long list of stations should now appear. These are all the gaging stations
within Massachusetts that the USGS makes measurements at. Scroll down until you find
the Fort River gage and select it (site number 01171300).
8. You are now where the data for the Fort River resides. Under the blue box
that says: Available data for this site, select Site Map from the drop down menu. Record
the drainage area.
9. Now go back to Time-series: Daily Data from the previous drop down menu.
First generate a graph and then get some data to put in. Make sure the Graph button is
selected and then put in any two years (be mindful of the period of record!). Include a
copy of your handmade graph in the lab write-up.
10. To get data, select Tab-separated from the output format box and pick the
dates 1/1/1976 1/1/1996. This will give you 20 years of daily streamflow data to play
with. Click submit to get a large text file of our data. In your browser, use the select all
command to copy the data. Copy this data and open Microsoft Excel and paste the data
there.

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 11. To fix the format, first delete the header information from the data (This is
about the first 27 rows of data in Excel). Now that is done, highlight Column A (or
whichever column you pasted the data into). Under the data tab, select Text-to-Columns to
separate the data into separate columns for us so we can do some analysis. Choose
delimited and then select Next. Check the Space Box and make sure that it looks like it
will parse the data correctly. Now click finish. You should have five columns of data (we
really only care about the date field and the field that has the streamflow measurements in
it immediately to the right of the date field; you can delete the others). You should have
7306 rows of streamflow data.
12. Lets calculate mean annual flow for each year and plot it. Start by creating a
column of numbers that begin with 1976 and incrementing by 1 up to 1995 (I used
column H).
13. Now that you have the years created, you will need to create a column of
values that you can look up. Use the year command in excel to create a column that has
only the year values from the date column. Drag this down to make sure each of your 7306
rows has a cell with the year in it.
14. Use the averageif command to find mean annual flow for each year. In the
cell next to the column that has the values 1976 through 1995 (mine was Column H from
above), I typed =AVERAGEIF($F$1:$F$7306,H2,$D$1:$D$7306), because my YEAR
column was in Column F (that is the range in the averageif function), Column H contained
my Criteria (i.e., the year over which I wanted to average; with H2 being the cell
containing 1976), and Column D contained the range of streamflows I wanted to Average
Over (Average Range).
a. A side note: The dollar signs are used to lock references, a dollar sign in front
of a letter means that the column is fixed, no matter how I drag my cell with the equation
in it, a dollar sign in front of the number means that the row is fixed. You can play around
with this to make sure you get them correct.
15. Your first value (1976) should be 67.07 cfs and your last value (1995) should
be 53.01 cfs.
16. Create a plot of all the values against time and submit this with your lab
report.
a. Is there a lot of variability annually?
b. What year had the highest mean annual streamflow, which year had the
lowest?
c. What is the ratio between these two years?
d. What is the mean annual streamflow over the 1976-1995 period?
(Hint: Should be close to 1986s value)
17. Now we will leave figuring out how to calculate mean monthly streamflow up
to you. I would recommend using the =Month() command to create a columns of months
next to your year column and following what we did above.
18. Create a plot of average monthly streamflow for our period. It should
have months 1-12 on the x-axis and streamflow on the y-axis.
a. What month has the highest average flow? Why do you think this particular
month has the highest flow?

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 b. What month has the lowest flow? Why do you think this month has the
lowest flow? (Hint: Precipitation is equally distributed over the year for Western MA, so
rain falls about equally in each month.
19. Lastly, we want to find the minimum and maximum streamflow. Use =Min()
and =Max() to help with this. What day did these occur on? (Use Find to help you find
the value). Hint: Low flow should be in September, High flow in May.