Amazon suspended sediment yield measurements using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) : first results

The Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) is an instrument that has been used for years with success on the sea, but little experience exists for big rivers. For the first time in Brazil, this kind of instrumen- t was used for continuous purposes, in the discharge measurement of Amazonian rivers. To date, there has been little information on the relation between the Total Suspended Sediment (TSS) concentration obtained by standard methods and the ADCP received signal intensity (echo), as a means of estimating the sediment flow. In this paper we try to obtain some results with this relation. We found that it is possible to identify the contributions of the tributaries to the main stream in terms of TSS and to know how the TSS cycle works during a year in a section and maybe regionally.