UAS-based remotely sensed data and field measurements of flow depth and velocity from the Blue River, Colorado, October 17-18, 2019

To suport an investigation of the feasibility of measuring river discharge using remotely sensed data acquired from an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), several types of remotely sensed data and field measurements were collected from two cross-sections on the Blue River in Colorado, just upstream of its confluence with the upper Colorado River, on October 18, 2018. This parent data release includes links to child pages for the following data sets:

1) Lidar data used for mapping channel bathymetry (depth), acquired with a novel instrument that was developed by ASTRALiTe to distinguish between returns from the water surface and riverbed based on the polarization of laser pulses.
2) Thermal image time series used to infer surface flow velocities via particle image velocimetry (PIV).
3) Field-based wading surveys of bed topography used to evaluate the bathymetric mapping capabilities of the ASTRALiTe lidar.
4) In situ measurements of flow depth and velocity acquired with an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and used to assess the accuracy of velocity estimates derived from thermal images via PIV. The ADCP also provided direct measurements of river discharge.