Water level, wind conditions, and river discharge data were
collected at the same instant of each satellite image. The Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER), Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) services a fixed meteorological station at the Ipswich Bay Yacht Club pier, recording water level, wind speed, and direction every 15 minutes. Daily river discharge data for the Parker River and Rowley River are available at the USGS stations 0110100 and 01102000 respectively. Tidal discharge is an important parameter for sediment dynamics. In fact when the tidal discharge is maximum, usually near mean sea level for mudflats, water velocities at the bottom are high, leading to high bottom shear stresses and sediment resuspension, thus increasing SSC. An estimate of the temporal variations in tidal discharge in a system is quite complex and usually requires a high resolution numerical model or intensive field measurements. Here we use the temporal variation in water level, dh/dt, as a proxy for tidal discharge, with positive values indicating flood direction.
Tif images as indicated in the EST-PR-RO-IP-SO-SedRemoteSens file for Landsat8 OLI sensors and Sentinel-2A/2B sensors are available in the corresponding zip folders: Landsat8_SSCmaps.zip, Sentinel2_SSCmaps.zip. Video composites of some tifs are available as AVI in the zip folders.