Robert Taylor

This project aims to capture in-situ footage of flow through submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) canopies. The project will include designing and implementing a system to obtain underwater field recordings at multiple sites in North Central Florida, as well as analysis of the recordings using Python image processing methods. In the field we will set up one camera so that it has a down-looking view at the canopy, and another camera setup to capture a transverse view which will be used to determine the change in height of the depressed canopy. A vector field will be extracted from the images and Bi-Orthogonal Decomposition (BOD) will be used to analyze the spatiotemporal features. The methods developed and data gathered during this project will serve to validate a future hydrodynamic model that is being developed by Dr. David Kaplan and Dr. Xiao Yu.