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TEAMER: Acoustic Characterization of ORPC Device Sound Signatures - Public Report and Data

Published by University of Washington | Department of Energy | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2025-12-16T19:18:22Z
This submission contains a public Post Access Report documenting drifting acoustic measurements near ORPC river turbines, an archive of associated report figures in MATLAB .fig format with embedded data, and a MATLAB script for extracting data from those figures. Drifting acoustic measurements were obtained around ORPC turbines in Millinocket, ME (August 2023) and Igiugig, AK (June 2024). The data was collected to understand how much underwater noise ORPC river turbines produce and how that noise changes with turbine operation. Data was gathered by releasing small, floating sensor systems that moved with the river current. These measurements were made using the shallow version of the Drifting Acoustic Instrumentation SYstem (DAISY), which recorded underwater sound while drifting past the turbines. At the same time, turbine performance data, such as rotation speed and power output, were recorded and time-synchronized with the acoustic data. This approach allowed researchers to compare turbine operating conditions directly with measured sound levels, helping them identify how and why turbine activity affects the surrounding underwater sound environment. The only difference between this and the full version is that turbine power output values are normalized relative to the maximum observed output, rather than given in absolute units. Each .fig file corresponds to a figure in the report, with data embedded in the axes objects. Users should refer to the report for figure annotations and descriptive context. A MATLAB script, "Extract_data_from_fig.m", is provided as an example for accessing the embedded data.

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