< Blog
September 24, 2021
Final water quality sample
By Marc SimardToday was another excellent day. In fact it was the last day for Boston University’s Water Quality Team. Thank you Josh Harringmeyer and Zach Vanderhiderfor such dedication to the success of Delta-X.
Josh deploys a LISST instrument in the Atchafalaya river to measure the size and concentration of particles suspended in water
Zach collects the final water quality sample of the Delta-X campaign!
Water gauge that was taken over by barnacles
The JPL and UNC team retrieved 14 water level gauges and barometers in the Terrebonne basin. While all gauges planned for retrieval today had survived hurricane Ida, one had been badly colonized by barnacles. It remains to be seen if it recorded any data. It is important to note that the JPL and UNC teams also recorded sonar transects along the way. These measurements of channel bathymetry will significantly improve the large scale hydrodynamic models.
Today, AVIRIS-NG flew the Atchafalaya, Terrebonne East and Barataria bay. This post-Ida AVIRIS-NG collection was funded by NASA’s R&A Program to take advantage of the unanticipated opportunity to do pre/post-Ida comparison. Indeed, comparing this new R&A dataset to the pre-Ida Delta-X dataset will provide an unprecedented observation of hurricane damage across the coastal wetlands. AVIRIS-NG transits back to Virginia tomorrow. Thank you again AVIRIS-NG Team. It is hard to believe you repeated the same area as Delta-X in only 2 days! I guess you should be thankful to the recent cold front.
Delta-X had its last evening briefing this evening to look at tomorrow’s weather. Special thanks to Delta-X meteorologist, Dr. Paul Miller, for his support during the Spring and Fall campaigns. He was quite disappointed to learn the Delta-X Fall campaign would all be done tomorrow. He was eager to continue predicting good weather a few more days.