Justin Tangen Valley City State University Using Side Scanning Sonar to Map Bottom Substrate Features in North Dakota Rivers Justin Tangen Valley City State University

Introduction The primary goal of this research is to map the substrate composition of a stretch of the Sheyenne River using side imaging sonar Using hands on inspections of 40 sites to confirm composition of the substrate Using ArcGIS to process the data Why? We went down the river and used a feature on the Side imaging unit that logs a picture, GPS’s coordinate, and depth information. After a couple trial runs I had it set up to our liking and we did a final run and logged images and data for the whole route After completing the stretch, the pictures were went through and decided to pick 40 sites that showed differing substrates that what we thought represented all the different kinds of substrates that the river could have. With the GPS coordinates, we set out with the Garmin and boat to do pebble count analysis Using sonar in the future, now we will have a solid understanding of what is happening on the river floor when we decide to use it Why- when we observe maps it goes empty when it comes to topographical features when it comes to rivers With a better understanding of the topo of rivers and the substrates we can potentially use these SSI images to find habitats Valley City State University

Side Scanning Sonar Consumer grade side scanning sonar has made it more affordable to access this technology Safer and faster than traditional substrate composition analysis Due to debris, depth, and turbidity Can cover ~6 miles per hour, in comparison to ~1 mile per day In the past this technology was primarily used by ocean vessels and in larger lakes and rivers where the transducer is towed a certain distance behind the boat to map the substrates Now they have it where it is incorporated onto the boat Only time we could go out before was when river was low enough t This can help us in dangerous areas Valley City State University

Side Scanning Sonar Here we can see a rudimentary image of how the sonar gathers the data Side scanning shoots a thin sonar beam at 180 degree column to the left and right of your vessel This beam is able to travel up 240 feet on each side of the transducer; 480ft of coverage total The right image shows the path the boat took at the top the dark column beneath the line is the water column, and the more reflective surface is the bottom of the river Valley City State University

Equipment Humminbird 1199ci HD SI Garmin GPSMap 78 Porta- bote Receiving power supply from 12v deep cell marine battery Garmin GPSMap 78 Connected to Humminbird via NMEA connection Margin of accuracy ~3-5 meters Porta- bote Outboard motor

Equipment The porta bote was nice as it meant we didn’t have to unload into the river. The lightweight meant that it could be loaded into a van along with the rest of our equipment and then easily drug down to shore. The humminbird unit had an onboard gps unit, but using the garmin allowed us to log trackfiles and waypoints more effectively so we had it connected via nmea cable Valley City State University

Equipment This shows the configuration of the boat when we went out logging. The man in front was used to weight down the front to keep the transducer in the water and to watch ahead and alert me if we needed to veer from the center and to pull the transducer if it got too shallow. As for myself my job was to keep the boat centerline and to use the Humminbird system to log images every three seconds. Valley City State University

Methods Maintaining river center to gather the best depth data and to get the best coverage of both banks Using the snapshot feature on the sonar, logging images every three seconds Gathering quality images that overlapped Reason being we wanted to have plenty of images when we went to put them into Arc Valley City State University

Methods Uploading to excel for formatting and data entry Pebble counts at 37 of the waypoints to compare substrates to the side scanning images that were gathered Inputting pebble count Pulling info from gps and sd in sonar Valley City State University

Research Area We focused in on a certain ~6 mile stretch of the Sheyenne that VCSU known very well due to prior mussel sampling runs that have been completed. This ran between the low head dam in Kathryn and stopped at Little Yellowstone Park on the Barnes county and Ransom county borders. Here we can see the track of the boat in the green Valley City States Prairie Water light red Dark red- 37 sites that we gathered images for Valley City State University

Side Scanning Sonar Site 16 Make sure to reorient them so they know what they are looking at On the river right we can see the substrate appears to be sand River center appears to be a finer substrate River left appears to have larger substrate in the middle of its column then fines down toward the bank Valley City State University

Side Scanning Sonar Good example of what happens when the river narrows, and transducer is still trying for 80ft Also directly under the boat we have a good example of a some elevation changes Valley City State University

Side Scanning Sonar Bridge pylons can be observed on the left and right of the river Also this was one of the rockiest stretches of Valley City State University

Summary We are going to use our pebble count and ssi to create these types of maps Valley City State University

Summary Geospatial analysis in ArcGis is ongoing Working to create effective shapefiles that represent differences in the substrate With this data we can now observe how the substrate changes over time

Thank You Funding Agencies Andre DeLorme – VCSU science chair NASA ND Space Grant Program Valley City State University SOAR program Andre DeLorme – VCSU science chair Lewis Weiland – VCSU research assistant Jason Rowell Michaela Halverson Shannon Hone

Sources http://www.humminbird.com/Category/Technology/Side-Imaging/ http://www.garmin.com/en-US?gclid=CjwKEAjw55K4BRC53L6x9pyDzl4SJAD_21V1qWHGEubdBWqjpa5bK126J6iuZAfTBBNFDAzqwd2yKRoCctjw_wcB https://www.porta-bote.com/