A Survey near Tambara along the Lower Zambezi River

Abstract

Abstract:The paper reports a field investigation on a reach of the lower Zambezi River about 230-240 km downstream of the Cahora Bassa dam in the Republic of Mozambique. In the framework of a wider research program, bathymetric measures of the riverbed were performed on a 10 km stretch of the river using an echo sounder, a GPS receiver, and an integrated navigation-acquisition system. Field observations and measures revealed a general agreement with macro-features of river morphology reported in early literature, dealing with the morphological response of the river to the construction of large dams, in the second half of the 20th century. Results hereby reported are some of the few examples of direct field measures in the lower Zambezi reported in literature, and could be used by researchers and practitioners either as a knowledge base for further surveys or as input data for validation and calibration of mathematical models and remote sensing observations.

Development of an integrated approach to the analysis and forecast of hydrographic and bathymetric data of water bodies and tailings ponds

“…The depth with horizontal coordinates (X, Y) should be obtained during hydrographic studies. It is necessary to develop a radio-controlled [28] device equipped with various sensors [29] for environmental monitoring, determining the relief and hydrographic characteristics [30] of a tailings dump, studying the habitat for local fish species [31] and collecting samples in hard-to-reach areas of reservoirs, examining dams for various damages [32], and developing a database system for accounting.…”

“…Data received from HEX Pixhawk 2.1 CUBE ORANGE+ is sent to Mission Planner to monitor real-time data such as GPS coordinates, altitude, speed, battery status and other parameters [35,36]. This data can be saved to a text file and sent to a web server for later saving in a MySQL database [32]. Next, using the developed python program code and its libraries, data is processed and visualized in 2D and 3D graphics [37,38].…”

Sensitivity Analysis of a Riparian Vegetation Growth Model

“…The river widths were measured from remote sensing images and aerial photos, derived from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) database and the Italian National Geoportal [9,[43][44][45][46], while the discharges were taken from several sources [4] and referred to the same date of the images (i.e., a regime equation could be applied between such data). The river features (flow discharges, widths), provided here as supplementary material, are intended to be representative of the mean cross-section and flow regime of the entire watercourse.…”