A decade of progress in conservation tillage in the South Carolina Coastal Plain

Stream discharge measurements with chemical dilution techniques have been proposed in several forms since the beginning of this century (Groat4). Early techniques consisted of introducing a chemical, usually brine, at a known rate into flowing water and determining the resulting concentration of the chemical in the stream at a section far enough downstream to assure adequate mixing of the chemical with the water. A variation of this method, and the technique used in the present study, was described by Barbagelata5 in 1928. In that method, a known quantity of tracer was added, as a slug, to the stream to be measured. At a sampling station sufficiently far downstream for adequate lateral mixing, the tracer concentration-time curve was determined. The stream discharge was then calculated from the amount of tracer added and the area measured under the curve