The Tulane Deepwater basin is outfitted with a measurement carriage (cart) system designed and constructed by engineers at the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. This measurement carriage allows the Tulane sediment dynamics team to generate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of experimental deltas and deepwter fans/channels with incredibly high lateral and vertical resolution. For example, when scaling up the experimental landscapes to field scale the maps will have resolutions comparable to high resolution LIDAR surveys. This mapping is done with a Keyence zero offset laser and JSR sonar system. In addition, the measurement carriage is used to deploy equipment capable of characterizing flow and sediment transport fields (e.g. flow velocities with acoustic Doppler velocimeters and sediment concentrations with siphons) at high resolutions. The carriage allows for the collection of images of preserved stratigraphy that can be placed in xyz space with high precision. The cart system is used to study the evolution of submarine levees constructed by turbidity currents, the morphodynamics of submarine fans and the construction of shelf-edge deltas.
