Between June 2002 and June 2003 we have installed over 35 river gauges across the UK and have facilities for automatically recording river and stream water levels to meet most needs. Our clients have included English Heritage, the Environment Agency, Jeremy Benn Associates Consulting and the National Trust
Stilling Well for stream level gauging
The smallest combined Pressure Transducer
Gauging subsurface pipe flows
Gauged weir structures
We have equipment to enable high quality rating curves to be established at river gauging sites and these include the latest Electromagnetic Current Meters and Impeller Meters for water velocity measurement and logging fluorometers and conductivity probes for dilution gauging.
We have a suite of Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters which are versatile, high precision instruments that measure flow velocity simultaneously in three directions and are thus able to produce high resolution data demonstrating vertical and horizontal flows (turbulence etc). These instruments can be used in the laboratory (such as in our tilting flume laboratory) or in field situations. The measurements are insensitive to water quality which allows for a wide range of applications. There are a range of scaffold set-ups for investigations where suites of probes are to be used in the field.
A field set-up with four ADVs mounted into stream flow in vegetated and unvegetated reaches.
We have a suite of fluorometers that can detect a fluorescent tracer in water at extremely low concentrations. These devices can be used to measure travel times for water to which the tracer is added to reach a given point downstream or downslope and as such can be used to calibrate hydrological models and determine hydrological connectivity. They can also be used to trace flowpaths for water (e.g. groundwater tracing, water route tracing). They can also be used for automatic logging of dilution gauging events.
Recently clients have included York City Council and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust at York to determine the hydrological connectivity of gently sloping fields to nearby rivers. This enabled adequate planning of the drainage needs for a new housing development. Our fluorometers have also been used at Whitby Abbey with English Heritage as our client in order to determine the route of an important groundwater spring in the Abbey grounds.
Fluorometer and Squirrel datalogger
Fluorometer in River Water