CHAPTER 12 - DISCHARGE MEASUREMENTS USING TRACERS

3. General Methods of Application

Salt and dye tracers are used to determine discharge in two basic ways: (1) the velocity-area method, in which time of tracer travel through a known channel length and average cross-sectional area determine discharge and (2) the dilution method, in which discharge is determined by the downstream concentration of fully mixed tracer, which has been added upstream at a constant rate, and by accounting for the amount of tracer solids.