Sediment-Record Calculations (SEDCALC), a menu-driven set of interactive computer programs, was developed to facilitate computation of suspended-sediment records. The programs comprising SEDCALC were developed independently in several District offices of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to minimize the intensive labor associated with various aspects of sediment-record computations.
SEDCALC operates on suspended-sediment-concentration data stored in American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII) files in a predefined card-image format. Program options within SEDCALC can be used to assist in creating and editing the card-image files, as well as to reformat card-image files to and from formats used by the USGS Water-Quality System.
SEDCALC provides options for creating card-image files containing time series of equal-interval suspended-sediment concentrations from
1. digitized suspended-sediment-concentration traces,
2. linear interpolation between log-transformed instantaneous
suspended-sediment-concentration data stored at unequal time
intervals, and
3. nonlinear interpolation between log-transformed
instantaneous suspended-sediment-concentration data
stored at unequal time intervals.
Suspended-sediment discharge can be computed from the streamflow and suspended-sediment-concentration data or by application of transport relations derived by regressing log-transformed instantaneous streamflows on log-transformed instantaneous suspended-sediment concentrations or discharges. The computed suspended-sediment discharge data are stored in card-image files that can be either directly imported to the USGS Automated Data Processing System or used to generate plots by means of other SEDCALC options.