ProcED: a MATLAB package for processing ADCP estuarine data

Abstract

ProcED is a MATLAB based computational package designed to facilitate the handling of a large amount of data derived from mount vessel ADCPs that monitor tidal flows and discharge in estuarine cross-sections. The package routines were written to process water current information obtained with an RD Instruments Rio Grande ADCP and its WinRiver software - version 1.03. They are capable to eliminate bad ensembles, to extrapolate current velocities for the surface and bottom blanked areas and to smooth noisy cross-profiles, enhancing the visualization of the velocity field. By performing space and time correlation between cell velocities, ProcED allows for the computation of the residual velocity field, both in the entire cross-section and in the discrete vertical profiles. Results are provided in graphical and table formats, the latter also including a table with the main flow characteristics such flooding and ebbing time, tidal elevation and current asymmetry, tidal prism and computations errors. A comparison with computations performed by WinRiver shows that ProcED discharge calculations are in average 5.5% smaller. The apparent underestimation of ProcED computations is ascribed to interpolation of the cross-profiles and to its different bottom extrapolation method. In the bottom area there is a discharge overestimation by WinRiver.