A laboratory evaluation of the laser in situ scattering and transmissometery instrument using natural sediments

Abstract The LISST (Laser In Situ Scattering and Transmissometery) instrument was designed by Sequoia Scientific to measure the particle size distributions and concentrations of sediment suspensions in the field environment. To understand the LISST's performance with natural sediments from a variety of marine sources, several experiments were performed to compare the LISST's results to traditional sieving, filtering and weighing techniques. The LISST was able to correctly locate the peak of a unimodal particle size distribution and resolve the two peaks of a bimodal distribution if they are separated by at least 1φ for sediment sizes of 5 to 250 μm. Unlike a single frequency scattering sensor for sediment concentration, which require sediment size specific calibration constants, the LISST is able to accurately measure sediment concentration with a single calibration constant for varying size distributions within the size range of 5 to 250 μm. The LISST was also found to adequately represent the particle volumetric size distribution for two different samples from marine environments.