Molly Wood is the National Sediment Specialist for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area’s Observing Systems Division. She develops policies and methods for measuring fluvial sediment transport and for computing streamflow using complex rating techniques. She also teaches national and international training courses on surface-water and sediment data collection.

I have lost track of just how much of what I understand about sediment data I've learned from Molly. But a substantial percentage of what I know about sediment measurements, sediment data processing, and potential data pitfalls comes either from her publications or conversations we've had over the years. This was a fun conversation that hit on several of those topics.

We talked about the sediment data types that the USGS collects and publishes, concentration-vs-load, sources of flow-load variability, isokinetic sampling, common sediment data interpretation errors, sediment surrogates, international sediment sampling studies, the future of sediment sampling, and several other topics.

You can find the data we talked about at the USGS NWIS Water Quality and Sediment Data Site: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/qw

Other bonus content - including the sediment videos Molly talked about - is available at the podcast website:
https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/rsm-river-mechanics-podcast

and the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibson

Other bonus content is available at the podcast website:
https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/rsm-river-mechanics-podcast

and the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibson