Channel bed elevations for the White River immediately below the Beaver Reservoir Dam in Carroll County Arkansas, 2020

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) conducted a bathymetric survey of the White River immediately downstream of the Beaver Reservoir Dam in Carroll County, Arkansas, on January 22, 2020. Channel-bed elevations were collected to support a USACE hydraulic modeling effort on the White River. Cross-sectional data within the river channel were collected using an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) coupled with a differentially corrected global positioning system (GPS) receiver. Water-depth data were converted to channel-bed elevation data by subtracting the depth value from the GPS derived water-surface elevation. Additional channel elevations (topographic data) were surveyed directly using survey-grade GPS along the channel bed and banks where the water depth was too shallow to be measured with the ADCP.

Positional location of the surveyed points was referenced to the North American Datum of 1983, and channel bed elevation, reported in feet, was referenced to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988. Surveying was done according to the standards described in Rydlund and Densmore, 2012.

Review of the global positioning system survey data shows a maximum vertical uncertainty of about 0.34 feet. This vertical uncertainty applies to the water surface elevations throughout the surveyed area, the bed elevations derived from water surface elevations, and land surface points. The vertical uncertainty of the global positioning system data in this survey was likely affected by multipath issues and varying degrees of tree cover along the riverbanks.

The data are provided in the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) shapefile format consisting of a group of files that have been compressed into a zip archive that is named Beaver_Bathy.zip.

References

Rydlund, P.H., Jr., and Densmore, B.K., 2012, Methods of practice and guidelines for using survey-grade global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) to establish vertical datum in the United States Geological Survey: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods, book 11, chap. D1, 102 p. with appendixes. [Also available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/11d1/.]