Molly Wood on Sediment Data

Molly Wood is the National Sediment Specialist for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area’s Observing Systems Division. She develops policies and methods for measuring fluvial sediment transport and for computing streamflow using complex rating techniques. She also teaches national and international training courses on surface-water and sediment data collection.

I have lost track of just how much of what I understand about sediment data I've learned from Molly.  But a substantial percentage of what I know about sediment measurements, sediment data processing, and potential data pitfalls comes either from her publications or conversations we've had over the years.   This was a fun conversation that hit on several of those topics.

We talked about the sediment data types that the USGS collects and publishes, concentration-vs-load, sources of flow-load variability, isokinetic sampling, common sediment data interpretation errors, sediment surrogates, international sediment sampling studies, the future of sediment sampling, and several other topics.

You can find the data we talked about at the USGS NWIS Water Quality and Sediment Data Site: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/qw

This episode was funded by the US Army Corps of Engineers Regional Sediment Management R&D Program (RSM)

Host: Stanford Gibson, Sediment Specialist at the Hydrologic Engineering Center and on the HEC-RAS program.

This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.

Mike Loretto edited the first three seasons and created the theme music.
Tessa Hall is editing most of Season 4.

Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts.

Video shorts and other bonus content are available at the podcast website:
https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/the-rsm-river-mechanics-podcast

...but most of the supplementary videos are available on the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibson

If you have guest recommendations or feedback you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate or fill out this recommendation and feedback form: https://forms.gle/wWJLVSEYe7S8Cd248