DUCK94 Nearshore Field Experiment

The DUCK94 nearshore field experiment was designed to apply recent advances in measurement technology to the study of nearshore processes in preparation for the SANDYDUCK experiment in 1997. It was primarily supported by the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Coastal Sciences Program and conducted at the US Army Corps of Engineers Field Research Facility at Duck, NC (figure coming soon). The scientific themes for DUCK94 include wave shoaling, nearshore circulation, boundary layers, swash processes, small scale sediments and topography. An experiment overview and summaries of the experimental plans of DUCK94 investigators can be found in Birkemier (1994). --From Haus, et. al. (1995).

DESCRIPTION OF DATA



As part of DUCK94, the RSMAS OSCR radar system was deployed during October 1994. The system operated in High Frequency (HF) mode at 25.4 MHz, and mapped coastal ocean currents over a 25 km X 44 km domain every twenty minutes with a horizontal resoultion of 1.2 km at 700 grid points (small dark circles). The surface current data was augmented with current meter moorings and repeat Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) transects, as part of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Coastal Ocean Processes (CoOp) experiment. The current meter moorings were equipped with vector measuring current meters (VMCM) which sampled currents at four minute intervals in 20 m and 25 m depths. The ADCP transects were taken with a ship-mounted 1.2 MHz narrow band RDI instrument. Transects were taken daily from 7 October 94 to 30 October 94, except for a 7 day period between 10 October 94 and 17 October 94, and a 3 day period between 23 October 94 and 26 October 94, when conditions were unfavorable for data collection. The collected data is shown in a table below. The northern transect is named transect 3, a middle transect is transect 3.5, and southern transect is transect 4.


ADCP DATA
TransectNo. of StaionsTotal Observations
3830
3.5521
415 (11 in OSCR domain)174