Abstract:

Davis/CODE drifters were released at the Mouth of Mobile Bay a quarter of the time into the ebb tide. The drifters were evenly spaced across the mouth from west to east. Deployments ranged from 6 hours to a week. This dataset reports location, velocity, temperature, and salinity data over time.

Suggested Citation:

Steven L Dykstra, Brian Dzwonkowski, Grant Lockridge, Stephan O'Brian. 2017. Drifter Releases in the Ebb Tidal Plume of Main Pass, Mobile Bay, AL, 2015-2016. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/N7TX3CFP

Publications:

Dzwonkowski, B., Greer, A. T., Briseño-Avena, C., Krause, J. W., Soto, I. M., Hernandez, F. J., … Graham, W. M. (2017). Estuarine influence on biogeochemical properties of the Alabama shelf during the fall season. Continental Shelf Research, 140, 96–109. doi:10.1016/j.csr.2017.05.001

Greer, A., Shiller, A., Hofmann, E., Wiggert, J., Warner, S., … Graham, W. (2018). Functioning of Coastal River-Dominated Ecosystems and Implications for Oil Spill Response: From Observations to Mechanisms and Models. Oceanography, 31(3). doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.302

Purpose:

The dataset was developed to characterize the ebb tidal plume to investigate estuarine water dispersion, fate, salinity intrusion, and SPM transport.

Data Parameters and Units:

Each spreadsheet is one release and each worksheet is one drifter. Location of drifter release: cell A1, Time: local standard time MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM, Time number, Lat/Lon: degrees and decimal degrees, Distance: kilometers, Velocity: meters per second, Temperature: Celsius, Salinity: parts per thousand

Instruments:

Drifters were created with Arduino electronics and Atlas Scientific probes

Error Analysis:

Data was processed to remove general errors and produce a moving average for the velocity and temperature. The data was truncated for this purpose.

Individual Files: