b'"THE LITTLE ROCK STAR"The University of Georgia team developed a gruelingThey repeated the process once each season, with sampling and profiling protocol that called for themall the challenges of COVID thrown on top, in 2020to measure discharge and a host of water qualityand 2021. "If it was easy, it would have been done parameters almost constantly through complete already," Lamp\'l points out. tidal cycles.The centerpiece of the team\'s testing instruments That meant heading out to the study site before dawn,is the SonTek RS5, the world\'s smallest acoustic loaded down with equipment, paddling down sloughsDoppler current profiler (ADCP), mounted on a and slogging through mud and vegetation to theHydroBoard II Micro hull. Innovative beam switching testing sites, setting up the equipment and what Suttercapabilities allow the RS5 to gather accurate velocity calls "a gajillion bottles," and gathering data almostdata just inches away from the bankfar closer than constantly for 12 to 14 hours at a time. other ADCPs can.And fighting mosquitoes. "You can measure a higher percentage of the stream And watching for alligators.than you would be able to with any other device," notes Kevin Labb, the Xylem application specialist who trained the UGA team on its use and joined the group for data collection on Little St. Simons Island.Every 15 minutes, the team conducted a transect of the marsh inlet with the ADCP, pulling it easily across the channels on its little hydroboard, tracking the movement of the tides and calculating tidal discharge (Q) in fine detail. In fact, Lamp\'l points out that the RS5 typically kicked off each study day\'s protocol by precisely indicatingto three decimal placeswhen the tide was turning, something that couldn\'t be accurately ascertained by observing the water\'s surface.In all, the RS5 is subject to a schedule as grueling as the research team, Labb points out."Usually, you go service a gauge, calibrate it, then take a discharge measurement and go to the next site, so most ADCPs really only run maybe 2 or 3 percent of the day," he explains. "At Little St. Simons Island, that RS5 is on for 12 hours a day. They\'re really pushing the boundary of normal data collection. The amount of data they collect in a day is like what other people might gather in a year."Wilde calls the RS5 "the little rock star.""The size of it is brilliant," she says. "You could carry UGA\'s Susan Wilde deploying the RS5 it to a tiny creek and use it in really shallow water.in reptile-friendly conditions. I don\'t know of any other system that can do that."Whos Minding the Planet? 55'