T237 Eolian Processes and Landscape Evolution

Wednesday, 25 September 2019
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 221AB, North Building

A-TTRACS, AEOLIAN TURBULENCE AND TRANSPORT RAPID COMPUTATIONAL SUITE: A GUI-ENABLED SOFTWARE PACKAGE FOR RAPID COMPUTATION OF AEOLIAN FIELD DATA

Paper number: T237-15
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 11:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Authors

Abstract

Quantifying aeolian turbulence and transport is critical to understanding aeolian processes in field environments. Recent advancements in instrumentation have led to an abundance of field data that can be tedious and time consuming to process. Here, we introduce A-TTRACS, the Aeolian Turbulence and Transport RApid Computational Suite. A-TTRACS is a free, GUI-enabled software package that is designed to rapidly process wind, transport, and grain size data. A-TTRACS provides a global platform for sharing and enhancing post-processing techniques to analyze datasets collected in aeolian field environments. Users are guided through a streamlined process to: (1) define sampling schematics, e.g., instrument heights and sampling frequencies, (2) input single or multiple timeseries, e.g., wind speed, direction, 3-D velocity components, or saltation concentration at various heights, and (3) compute, plot, and export turbulence and transport parameters over user-defined averaging periods. Calculated flow and transport estimates include shear velocity, velocity fluctuations from the mean, turbulent kinetic energy, Reynolds Stress, flow exuberance, and saltation concentration profiles, among others. For sediment, A-TTRACS is capable of computing grain size statistics from a variety of standardized methods (e.g., Folk and Ward method, Method of Moments) for single or multiple sediment samples.

Here, we (1) present a brief overview of the A-TTRACS software package, (2) show an example of A-TTRACS post-processing methods using field data, and (3) describe how aeolian researchers can become A-TTRACS developers via GitHub.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 51, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2019AM-339639

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