Freshwater plumes play a critical role in the nearshore transport and dispersal of nutrients, pollutants
and sediments. However, in shallow environments such as tidal flats, it can be difficult to resolve smallscale
flow features such as thin plumes, or the fronts that often form on the leading edges of spreading
plumes. Traditional boat-sampling techniques do not measure close to the water surface, and many surface
drifters have drafts exceeding 0.5 m, precluding their deployment in very shallow water (Johnson et al.
2003; Austin and Atkinson 2004; Schmidt et al. 2003; MacMahan et al. 2009).
Exceptionally high spatial and temporal resolution velocity profiles, well-suited to resolving shallow
flows, can be provided by ‘pulse-coherent’ Acoustic Doppler Profilers (ADPs). These instruments infer
water velocity from the Doppler-induced phase shift between pairs of short acoustic pulses (Lhermitte and
Serafin 1984; Lohrmann, Hackett and Røed 1990; Zedel et al. 1996). Unfortunately, application of these
pulse-coherent systems is limited by the ability to uniquely resolve this phase shift between pulses; large
phases are ‘wrapped’ onto the range −π < phase < π, resulting in large errors in velocity measurements
(Lohrmann and Nylund 2008). This wrapping leads to the constraint that velocities must not exceed
a maximum value, with a smaller maximum required the longer the profile range. We present novel
measurements from a pulse-coherent ADP mounted on a surface drifter in shallow (0.4 to 1 m deep) flows
over a tidal flat in Skagit Bay, Washington. The drifter-mounted ADP moved with the fast surface flows,
ensuring that the water velocities relative to the drifter were small and easily resolved by the pulse-coherent
profiler. Hence, it was possible to overcome the difficulties associated with phase wrapping.
The field site, on the tidal flats of Skagit Bay, USA (Fig. 2), was characterized by shallow water
depths (often < 1 m) and thin (around 0.3m thick) freshwater plumes. The leading edges of these plumes
were marked by surface fronts which trapped drifters, foam and other flotsam. Initially, the fronts were
trapped along the edge of a tidal channel by internal hydraulic control (Mullarney and Henderson 2011).
However, as flood tide progressed and the flow over the flats became subcritical, the fronts departed from
the channel edge and propagated across the flats against the incoming tidal flow (Fig. 2).
We estimate front-following rates of turbulent energy dissipation using data from the drifter-mounted
ADP and the structure function method of Wiles et al. 2006. Similar dissipation estimates were recently
obtained by Thomson 2012 using a wave following drifter with a draft of 1.25 m. Whereas Thomson
2012 focuses on near-surface wave-injected turbulence in depths exceeding 1.25 m, we study currents and
dissipation from near the surface to the bed over shallow tidal flats (depths ≈ 0.3 – 0.9 m).