About the project

Reliable water level information is vital for understanding how tidal water flooding and inundation affect coastal wetlands. Despite the rich body of tidal wetland studies in the Reserve System, long-term availability of wetland feature-specific water level monitoring data has been minimal even for reserves with well-developed wetlands and water level monitoring programs. With access to high-precision, long-term water level monitoring data, reserves can document variability among tidal wetland features, ultimately informing potential restoration activities. To address this need, a transfer project employed a targeted training approach to install novel arm-and-float water level loggers and bring expertise in hydrodynamic monitoring and tidal datum calculation to seven reserves.

About this resource

This user manual and training guide documents the design of the novel arm-and-float water level logger, the approach used to deploy the devices and record data, and methodology for calculating tidal datums based on the measurements made by the loggers. The manual also includes tips for running scripts and interpreting the output visualizations.