Strong winds caused substantial water surface elevation differences in Lake Erie around November 15, 2020. Here's an animated plot of elevations measured by NOAA. Plot was developed using R and Windows Live Movie Maker
Before and During Flooding Drone Photos
Modern unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), better known to the rest of us as drones or quadcopters, can be programmed to collect photos from specific coordinates, altitude, orientation, and gimbal angle, thus allowing photos on different days from the same perspective.
Animated Dissolved Oxygen Saturation in the Delaware Estuary
Here's an animated plot of the % of dissolved oxygen saturation in the Delaware Estuary throughout 2022. All data is from USGS processed to compute the % of saturation and make the animation.
Lake Erie 2022 edition
Another seiche occurred on Lake Erie December 23-25, 2022. Here is an animated plot using the NOAA PORTS data.
Lake Erie Pileup
Strong winds caused substantial water surface elevation differences in Lake Erie around November 15, 2020. Here's an animated plot of elevations measured by NOAA.
2Delaware River time lapse near Philadelphia
Here's a time lapse I made of the Delaware River near Philadelphia. At this location the Delaware is tidal and the water surface elevation changes throughout the day. Lots of legacy submerged man-made structure here revealed at low tide.
Animated Schuylkill River Flood after Tropical Storm Isaias
Animated plot of #Schuylkill River flooding following Tropical Storm #Isaias Data from USGS gages.
A Year in Flow
Revisiting the river flow profile plot from an earlier post, the video below loops each day's flow profile for the Delaware River in 2019. Data is from USGS gages processed using R and Windows Live Movie Maker.
Fish Tank Fun 2 with Flir One
Our second fish tank experiment with the Flir One was to insert a foam rubber divider and fill each half of the tank with hot and cold water.
1Fish Tank Fun 1 with Flir One
My son and I played around with an old fish tank, some tap water, and a Flir One thermal imaging attachment for a smart phone. Here is part one.
1Animated River Flow Revisited
My prior post on animated flow in the Delaware River contained the last work I performed on my previous lap top just before it gave up the ghost. When a colleague asked me to share it, I was distressed to realize that the script was lost.
150 years of Delaware Estuary Dissolved Oxygen
The Delaware River Basin Commission's Delaware Estuary water quality monitoring program, which was initiated in 1967, is one of the longest running monitoring programs in the world. One advantage of such a long data set is that we can see the changes to water quality over time.
1Hurricane Irene at the Delaware Estuary Revisited
Back in August 2011, Hurricane Irene struck the mid-Atlantic coast. This animated graph shows how the storm surge from Irene and the terrestrial flooding from Irene and Tropical Storm Lee (a few days later) impacted water surface elevations in the Delaware Estuary.
2Playing with the US Population
Here's an app that illustrates how fertility and death rates impact the US age structure diagram over time. The app uses a simple population model to forecast the US age structure in 100 years, starting from 2010 census data and user-selected fertility and death rates.
2Superstorm Sandy at the Delaware Estuary Revisited
Continuing on the theme of updating older visualizations into newer formats, below is a clip of the impact of Superstorm Sandy on Delaware Estuary water surface elevations. The original MS Excel and screen capture version is posted here.
2Delaware River Water Quality Visualization App
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) just released a new app for visualizing water quality in the Delaware River Basin. The DRBC Special Protection Waters Monitoring Program Explorer is a Shiny app that allows users to generate a boxplot and summary table of selected water quality data.
2Solar PVC Growth from One Time Investment: A Monte Carlo Analysis Shiny App
Imagine you bought solar PVC arrays today, sold the power generated to your local utility, and used the proceeds to add new solar arrays each year.
2A Shiny App for estimating Multiplier Exponent Curves from Manning's Equation Inputs
WASP and other flow and water quality models ask users to input multiplier and exponent values relating velocity and depth to discharge. These relationships take the form of V=aQ^b and depth=cQ^d, where the values a, b, c, and d describe the curve that approximates paired points from other sources.
1Effluent Nutrient Concentrations by Waste Water Treatment Type: A Shiny App
In 2014, EPA documented the relative lack of nutrient data from waste water treatment plant effluents, even though development of surface water quality standards for nitrogen and phosphorus has been a stated priority for more than a decade.
1Monte Carlo Analysis of Manning's Equation: A Shiny App
Monte Carlo analysis is a great way to explore the impact of input variable uncertainty on the results of engineering equations, and with vector variables and distribution and sampling functions at its core, R is a natural platform for this analysis.
3Box Plot as Goal Post
For as long as I have been working with water data, I wanted to construct a line graph superimposed on a box and whisker plot where the boxes show the distribution of values and the line shows some current condition.
4Blow Out Tide in the Delaware Estuary
High winds in the Delaware Estuary region caused a "blowout" tide in early April 2016, where observed water surface elevations were much lower than those predicted via harmonic constituents. Extreme low blowout tides can hamper navigation due insufficient depth.
Animated Flow in the non-tidal Delaware River
The Delaware River experienced some high flow in late February 2016, providing an opportunity for an interesting animated graph of river response.
4Delaware versus Chesapeake revisited
In this earlier post, I analyzed tidal water surface elevation data from the NOAA PORTS system from both the Delaware Estuary and the Chesapeake Bay, showing how the two systems react very differently to the tidal forcing at their Atlantic Ocean boundaries.
Population Model Revisited
In a previous post I showed an animated age structure diagram depicting output from a simple population model written in Excel. Here is another version of that model written in R.
High Flows in Lower Columbia River near Portland, OR
After I completed the animated tidal water surface elevation plots for the Delaware Estuary, I looked for other systems with a good set of tidal observation stations. The Lower Columbia River near Portland, Oregon fit the bill.
Animated 3D Plot of Ammonia Toxics Criteria
In 2013, EPA published final national recommended water quality criteria for the protection of aquatic life from the toxic effects of ammonia in freshwater.
2Tidal Amplification - Chesapeake versus Delaware
In the Delaware Estuary, the tidal range at the mouth of the estuary becomes amplified, resulting in a larger range (difference between high and low tide water surface elevation) further up the estuary. One way to visualize this effect is via violin plots.
Automated Animated Choropleth
Here's an animated choropleth (graph using colored map shapes) of HUC8 watersheds in the Delaware River Basin showing water yield over a span of 20 days.
1Automated Animated Tide Data
I developed an R script to retrieve NOAA PORTS data for the Delaware Estuary overnight and generate an animated water surface elevation plot. I hope to include this in a larger Delaware River Dashboard web page containing graphs of near real-time data.
1Harvesting Web Data for Automation of a Hydrodynamic Model
My colleague and I recently published a technical note in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) on automating a hydrodynamic model of the Delaware Estuary.
R shiny app for Boat Run monitoring
I am very excited about R at the moment. Here is an example of an app I constructed for one of the long term monitoring projects at my full time place of employment.
Flood Time Series from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee
This video shows the progression of flooding in the non-tidal Delaware River River during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.
Chesapeake DO with Wind Rose
Straying outside the Delaware River Basin, this one features the Chesapeake. And it includes an animated wind rose.
Animated Dissolved Oxygen with Sun and Tide
In October 2012 we deployed 2 HOBO U26-001 dissolved oxygen loggers in Frankford Creek, in Philadelphia, PA.
View comments