Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Water-Quality Surveys for Bushy Park Reservoir

• Main Authors: Paul Conrads, Jimmy Clark, Timothy Lanier, Matthew Petkewich, Celeste Journey
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: USGS Science Data Catalog 2017
• Subjects: surface water quality; hydrology; water chemistry; water temperature; specific conductance; pH; turbidity; total chlorophyll fluorescence; phycocyanin fluorescence; Back River, Berkeley County, SC; Back River
• Online Access: https://search.dataone.org/view/c547da9b-860b-41d0-83f4-c7e639fac417

The Bushy Park Reservoir is a relatively shallow impoundment in a semi-tropical climate and is the principal water supply for the 400,000 people of the City of Charleston and the surrounding areas including the industries in the Bushy Park Industrial Complex. Although there is an adequate supply of freshwater in the reservoir, there are taste-and-odor water-quality concerns. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) worked in cooperation with the Charleston Water System to study the hydrology and water-quality of the Bushy Park Reservoir to identify factors affecting water-quality conditions. This data release is for the water-quality data collected with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for a water-quality study of Bushy Park Reservoir. Sixteen water-quality surveys were collected over the period of September 2013 to May 2015. Data includes water temperature, specific conductance, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll, and blue-green algae. The typical water-quality survey lasted around four hours, collected data every second (or 3 feet) for the seven parameters for a total 100,000 data points. This Data Release is for USGS Scientific Investigations Report entitled Characterization of the Water Quality of Bushy Park Reservoir, South Carolina 2013-2015 (in press).