scholarly journals Estimating Suspended Sediment Concentrations from River Discharge Data for Reconstructing Gaps of Information of Long-Term Variability Studies

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2382
Author(s):  
Bárbara M. Jung ◽  
Elisa H. Fernandes ◽  
Osmar O. Möller ◽  
Felipe García-Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Suspended Sediment ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Efficiency Coefficient ◽  
Discharge Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Suspended Sediment Concentrations ◽  
Rating Curves

Suspended sediment rating-curves are low cost and reliable tools used all around the world to estimate river suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) based on either linear or non-linear regression with a second variable, such as the river discharge. The aim of this paper is to undertake an evaluation of four different suspended sediment rating-curves for three turbid large river tributaries flowing into the largest choked coastal lagoon of the world, a very turbid system. Statistical parameters such as Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE), percent of bias (PBIAS) and a standardized root-mean-square error (RMSE), referred to as RSR (RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio) were used to calibrate and validate the suspended sediment rating-curves. Results indicated that for all tributaries, the non-linear approach yielded the best correlations and proved to be an effective tool to estimate the SSC from river flow data. The tested curves show low bias and high accuracy for monthly resolution. However, for higher temporal resolution, and therefore variability, an ad hoc data acquisition to capture extreme rating-curve values is required to reliably fill gaps of information for both performing modeling approaches and setting monitoring efforts for long-term variability studies.

Discharge estimation and monitoring extreme events by satellite altimetry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossella Belloni ◽  
Stefania Camici ◽  
Angelica Tarpanelli
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Water Level ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
Satellite Altimetry ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Discharge Time ◽  
Discharge Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Daily Discharge ◽  
Rating Curves

<p>In view of recent dramatic floods and drought events, the detection of trends in the frequency and magnitude of long time series of flood data is of scientific interest and practical importance. It is essential in many fields, from climate change impact assessment to water resources management, from flood forecasting to drought monitoring, for the planning of future water resources and flood protection systems. <br>To detect long-term changes in river discharge a dense, in space and time, network of monitoring stations is required. However, ground hydro-meteorological monitoring networks are often missing or inadequate in many parts of the world and the global supply of the available river discharge data is often restricted, preventing to identify trends over large areas.  <br>The most direct method of deriving such information on a global scale involves satellite earth observation. Over the last two decades, the growing availability of satellite sensors, and the results so far obtained in the estimation of river discharge from the monitoring of the water level through satellite radar altimetry has fostered the interest on this subject.  <br>Therefore, in the attempt to overcome the lack of long continuous observed time series, in this study satellite altimetry water level data are used to set-up a consistent, continuous and up-to-date daily discharge dataset for different sites across the world. Satellite-derived water levels provided by publicly available datasets (Podaac, Dahiti, River& Lake, Hydroweb and Theia) are used along with available ground observed river discharges to estimate rating curves. Once validated, the rating curves are used to fill and extrapolate discharge data over the whole period of altimetry water level observations. The advantage of using water level observations provided by the various datasets allowed to obtain discharge time series with improved spatio-temporal coverages and resolutions, enabling to extend the study on a global scale and to efficiently perform the analysis even for small to medium-sized basins.  <br>Long continuous discharge time series so obtained are used to perform a global trend analysis on extreme flood and drought events. Specifically, annual maximum discharge and peak-over threshold values are extracted from the simulated daily discharge time series, as proxy variables of independent flood events. For flood and drought events, a trend analysis is carried out to identify changes in the frequency and magnitude of extreme events through the Mann-Kendall (M-K) test and a linear regression model between time and the flood magnitude.  <br>The analysis has permitted to identify areas of the world prone to floods and drought, so that appropriate actions for disaster risk mitigation and continuous improvement in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery practices can be adopted. </p>

Impact of Chelicorophium curvispinum on the concentration-discharge response of suspended sediment in the Rhine River

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel van der Perk
Keyword(s):  
Suspended Sediment ◽  
Suspended Sediment Concentration ◽  
Sediment Concentration ◽  
Sudden Increase ◽  
Rhine River ◽  
Rating Curve ◽  
Independent Evidence ◽  
Sediment Rating Curve ◽  
Suspended Sediment Concentrations

<p>In an ongoing study to the decline in suspended sediment concentrations and loads in the Rhine river since the mid-1950s, the temporal changes in the power-law sediment rating curve parameters were examined. This revealed that the rating exponent of the rating curve increased substantially between the early and late 1980s. Until the early 1980s, the ratings curves were relatively flat with values of the rating exponent b varying around 0.2. In the mid-1980s, the exponent suddenly increased to a value between 0.4 and 0.6 and since then has remained within this range. This change in the rating exponent was mainly caused by a decrease in suspended sediment concentrations during low discharges. During high discharges, the suspended sediment concentration initially increased during the late 1980s, but this increase was nullified soon afterwards due to the declining trend in suspended sediment concentration.</p><p>The sudden increase of the rating exponent coincided with the period that the Ponto-Caspian <em>Chelicorophium curvispinum</em> (Caspian mud shrimp) invaded the Rhine river basin. This suggests that this suspension-feeder species bears the prime responsibility for this increase, although this hypothesis requires further independent evidence. The sudden increase in the rating exponent does however not manifest itself in the long-term gradual trend of declining suspended sediment concentrations and vice versa. Apparently, the sequestration of sediment by <em>Chelicorophium curvispinum</em> is only temporary: the suspended sediment sequestered during periods of relatively low discharges is likely remobilised again during periods of high discharge. This implies that the invasion of <em>Chelicorophium curvispinum</em> has not played a significant role in the decline of suspended sediment concentrations. The precise reasons for the gradual long-term decline in suspended sediment concentration remain yet unknown.</p>

Non-linear, long-term evolution of sea surface temperature across the World Ocean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Martinez-Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Sea Surface Temperature ◽  
World Ocean ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Second Derivative ◽  
Term Evolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Non Linear

<p>Sea surface temperature (SST) is the only oceanic parameter on which depend heat fluxes between ocean and atmosphere and, therefore, SST is one of the key factors that influence climate and its variability. Over the twentieth century, SSTs have significantly increased around the global ocean, warming that has been attributed to anthropogenic climate change, although it is not yet clear how much of it is related to natural causes and how much is due to human activities. A considerable part of available literature regarding climate change has been built based on the global or hemispheric analysis of surface temperature trends. There are, however, some key open questions that need to be answered and for this task estimates of long-term SST trend patterns represent a source of valuable information. Unfortunately, long-term SST trend patterns have large uncertainties and although SST constitutes one of the most-measured ocean variables of our historic records, their poor spatial and temporal sampling, as well as inhomogeneous measurements technics, hinder an accurate determination of long-term SST trends, which increases their uncertainty and, therefore, limit their physical interpretation as well as their use in the verification of climate simulations.<br>Most of the long-term SST trend patterns have been built using linear techniques, which are very usefull when they are used to extract information of measurements satisfying two key assumptions: linearity and stationarity. The global warming resulting of our economic activities, however, affect the state of the World Ocean and the atmosphere inducing changes in the climate that may result in oscillatory modes of variability of different frequencies, which may undergo non-stationary and non-linear evolutions. In this work, we construct long-term SST trend patterns by using non-linear techniques to extract non-linear, long-term trends in each grid-point of two available global SST datasets: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Extended Reconstructed SST (ERSST) and from the Hadley Centre sea ice and SST (HadISST). The used non-linear technique makes a good job even if the SST data are non-linear and non-stationary. Additionally, the nonlinearity of the extracted trends allows the use of the first and second derivative to get more information about the global, long-term evolution of the SST fields, favoring thus a deeper understanding and interpretation of the observed changes in SST. Particularly, our results clearly show, in both ERSST and HadISST datasets, the non-uniform warming observed in the tropical Pacific, which seems to be related to the enhanced vertical heat flux in the eastern equatorial Pacific and the strengthening of the warm pool in the western Pacific. By using the second derivative of the nonlinear SST trends, emerges an interesting pattern delimiting several zones in the Pacific Ocean which have been responded in a different way to the impose warming of the last century.</p>

Sediments of the Tay Estuary. II. Formation of Ephemeral Zones of High Suspended Sediment Concentrations.

1975 ◽  
Vol 75 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Buller
Keyword(s):  
Suspended Sediment ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
High Tide ◽  
High Water ◽  
Main Channel ◽  
Tidal State ◽  
Suspended Sediment Concentrations ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
Calm Weather ◽  
Dry Out

SynopsisDuring periods of sustained moderate river discharge and quiescent marine conditions little external suspended sediment enters the estuarine circulation of the Tay. That material which is in suspension is largely derived from the estuary margins where tidal currents superimposed by wind-induced waves are competent to resuspend fine material from the surface of the ‘mud’ flats and erode bedded silts from the incised banks of minor channels and runnels draining them. The quantities of this sediment entering the system are largely determined by tidal state and amplitude, as well as wind velocity.On spring tides the flats are entirely covered at high water, and dry out completely at low water. The volume of water and its areal coverage at high tide ensures that, during the ebb, water charged with high concentrations of suspended sediment is directed from the fiats into the surface and middepth waters of the main channel. This process acting along the 20 km length of the channel flanking the ‘mud’ flats, combined with the low tide ‘ponding effect’ caused by the tide flooding from the sea while the upper estuarine water is still ebbing, results in the cumulative formation of a zone of high suspended sediment concentrations (turbidity maximum). As the flood tide becomes fully established the zone is diluted and dispersed. During neap tides the same processes operate, but because a smaller area of the flats is covered at high water and uncovered at low water, and because neap tidal current speeds are lower than those for spring tides, two proportionally weaker zones are recognised.Following periods of sustained moderate river discharge, quiet sea conditions and calm weather, suspended sediment concentrations in the Tay are negligible irrespective of tidal state or amplitude.

scholarly journals Impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems: a global-scale analysis of ecologically relevant river flow alterations

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 783-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Döll ◽  
J. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Flow Regimes ◽  
Freshwater Ecosystems ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
Water Withdrawals ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. River flow regimes, including long-term average flows, seasonality, low flows, high flows and other types of flow variability, play an important role for freshwater ecosystems. Thus, climate change affects freshwater ecosystems not only by increased temperatures but also by altered river flow regimes. However, with one exception, transferable quantitative relations between flow alterations and ecological responses have not yet been derived. While discharge decreases are generally considered to be detrimental for ecosystems, the effect of future discharge increases is unclear. As a first step towards a global-scale analysis of climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems, we quantified the impact of climate change on five ecologically relevant river flow indicators, using the global water model WaterGAP 2.1g to simulate monthly time series of river discharge with a spatial resolution of 0.5 degrees. Four climate change scenarios based on two global climate models and two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios were evaluated. We compared the impact of climate change by the 2050s to the impact of water withdrawals and dams on natural flow regimes that had occurred by 2002. Climate change was computed to alter seasonal flow regimes significantly (i.e. by more than 10%) on 90% of the global land area (excluding Greenland and Antarctica), as compared to only one quarter of the land area that had suffered from significant seasonal flow regime alterations due to dams and water withdrawals. Due to climate change, the timing of the maximum mean monthly river discharge will be shifted by at least one month on one third on the global land area, more often towards earlier months (mainly due to earlier snowmelt). Dams and withdrawals had caused comparable shifts on less than 5% of the land area only. Long-term average annual river discharge is predicted to significantly increase on one half of the land area, and to significantly decrease on one quarter. Dams and withdrawals had led to significant decreases on one sixth of the land area, and nowhere to increases. Thus, by the 2050s, climate change may have impacted ecologically relevant river flow characteristics more strongly than dams and water withdrawals have up to now. The only exception refers to the decrease of the statistical low flow Q90, with significant decreases both by past water withdrawals and future climate change on one quarter of the land area. However, dam impacts are likely underestimated by our study. Considering long-term average river discharge, only a few regions, including Spain, Italy, Iraq, Southern India, Western China, the Australian Murray Darling Basin and the High Plains Aquifer in the USA, all of them with extensive irrigation, are expected to be less affected by climate change than by past anthropogenic flow alterations. In some of these regions, climate change will exacerbate the discharge reductions, while in others climate change provides opportunities for reducing past reductions. Emissions scenario B2 leads to only slightly reduced alterations of river flow regimes as compared to scenario A2 even though emissions are much smaller. The differences in alterations resulting from the two applied climate models are larger than those resulting from the two emissions scenarios. Based on general knowledge about ecosystem responses to flow alterations and data related to flow alterations by dams and water withdrawals, we expect that the computed climate change induced river flow alterations will impact freshwater ecosystems more strongly than past anthropogenic alterations.

scholarly journals Value of river discharge data for global-scale hydrological modeling

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 4125-4173 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Hunger ◽  
P. Döll
Keyword(s):  
Correction Factor ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
Hydrological Modeling ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Flow Characteristics ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Station Correction ◽  
Discharge Data

Abstract. This paper investigates the value of observed river discharge data for global-scale hydrological modeling of a number of flow characteristics that are required for assessing water resources, flood risk and habitat alteration of aqueous ecosystems. An improved version of WGHM (WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model) was tuned in a way that simulated and observed long-term average river discharges at each station become equal, using either the 724-station dataset (V1) against which former model versions were tuned or a new dataset (V2) of 1235 stations and often longer time series. WGHM is tuned by adjusting one model parameter (γ) that affects runoff generation from land areas, and, where necessary, by applying one or two correction factors, which correct the total runoff in a sub-basin (areal correction factor) or the discharge at the station (station correction factor). The study results are as follows. (1) Comparing V2 to V1, the global land area covered by tuning basins increases by 5%, while the area where the model can be tuned by only adjusting γ increases by 8% (546 vs. 384 stations). However, the area where a station correction factor (and not only an areal correction factor) has to be applied more than doubles (389 vs. 93 basins), which is a strong drawback as use of a station correction factor makes discharge discontinuous at the gauge and inconsistent with runoff in the basin. (2) The value of additional discharge information for representing the spatial distribution of long-term average discharge (and thus renewable water resources) with WGHM is high, particularly for river basins outside of the V1 tuning area and for basins where the average sub-basin area has decreased by at least 50% in V2 as compared to V1. For these basins, simulated long-term average discharge would differ from the observed one by a factor of, on average, 1.8 and 1.3, respectively, if the additional discharge information were not used for tuning. The value tends to be higher in semi-arid and snow-dominated regions where hydrological models are less reliable than in humid areas. The deviation of the other simulated flow characteristics (e.g. low flow, inter-annual variability and seasonality) from the observed values also decreases significantly, but this is mainly due to the better representation of average discharge but not of variability. (3) The optimal sub-basin size for tuning depends on the modeling purpose. On the one hand, small basins between 9000 and 20 000 km2 show a much stronger improvement in model performance due to tuning than the larger basins, which is related to the lower model performance (with and without tuning), with basins over 60 000 km2 performing best. On the other hand, tuning of small basins decreases model consistency, as almost half of them require a station correction factor.

scholarly journals Comparison of sediment rating curves and sediment yield in subbasins of the Itacaiúnas River Watershed, Eastern Amazon

RBRH ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcio Sousa da Silva ◽  
Rosane Lopes Cavalcante ◽  
Pedro Walfir Martins e Souza Filho ◽  
Renato Oliveira da Silva Júnior ◽  
Paulo Rógenes Pontes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Suspended Sediment ◽  
Sediment Yield ◽  
High Water ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Tropical Rivers ◽  
River Watershed ◽  
Sediment Production ◽  
Power Equation ◽  
Suspended Sediment Concentrations ◽  
Rating Curves

ABSTRACT Understanding the hydrosedimentological dynamics of tropical rivers is a challenge in the Amazon due to its remote and difficult-to-access areas. This study was based on data collected from 16 hydrosedimentological control sections in the 6 subbasins that make up the Itacaiúnas River Watershed (IRW), with 4 annual campaigns (high water levels, rising water levels, falling water levels, low water levels) between 2015 and 2019, with the aim of constructing and comparing sediment rating curves and sediment yield. The data at the mouth of the IRW revealed that the rainy season is responsible for 93% of liquid discharges (Q) with an average of 1460.88 m3/s and for 98% of suspended sediment discharges (SSQ) with an average of 5864.15 tons/day. Suspended sediment concentrations (SSCs) are low to moderate (50 to 150 mg/l). The curves encompassing all the data showed R2 values (0.92 to 0.99) greater than the curves with only the values of the rainy or dry season, indicating a good fit of the power equation to the SSQ and Q data for all sections studied. Higher values of coefficients a and b show areas of greater sediment production and deforestation, as well as areas with new sources of sediment and preserved forest.

Numerical modelling of hydro-morphodynamic channel processes at decadal timescales using optimization methods: an application to the Dijle River, Belgium

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sardar Ateeq-Ur-Rehman ◽  
Nils Broothaerts ◽  
Ward Swinnen ◽  
Gert Verstraeten
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Suspended Sediment ◽  
Sediment Load ◽  
Morphological Changes ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
River Channel ◽  
Suspended Sediment Load ◽  
Rating Curves

<p>Numerical hydro-morphodynamic models can simulate the impact of future changes in climate and land cover on river channel dynamics. Accurate predictions of the hydro-morphological changes within river channels require a realistic representation of controlling factors and boundary conditions (BC), such as the sediment load. This is, in particular, true where simulations are run over longer timescales and when sparse data on sediment load is available. Using sediment rating curves to reconstruct the missing sediment load data can lead to poor estimates of temporal variations in sediment load, and hence, erroneous predictions of channel morphodynamics. Furthermore, when simulating channel morphological changes at longer timescales, this comes at a high computational cost making it impossible to run various scenarios of changing boundary conditions to long river reaches with sufficient spatial detail.  Here, we apply different methods (morphological factors (MFs) and wavelet transform (WT)) to overcome these problems and to arrive at faster and more accurate predictions of long-term morphodynamic simulations.</p><p> </p><p>We modelled river channel bed level changes of the River Dijle (central Belgium) from 1969 to 1999. Detailed cross-sectional surveys every 20 to 25 m along the river axis were collected in 1969, 1999 and 2018. Since 1969, the river has been incised by about 2 m most probably as a response to land-use/land-cover changes and subsequent changes in discharge and sediment load.  Daily discharge and water level measurements are available for the entire period; however, daily suspended sediment load was only collected between 1998 and 2000. Therefore, WTs were coupled with artificial neural networks (WT-ANN) to calculate long-term sediment load BCs (1969-1999) from the short-term collected suspended sediment concentration samples. Sediment load predictions with sediment rating curves only obtain an R<sup>2</sup> of 0.115, whereas WT-ANN predictions of suspended sediment load data show an R<sup>2</sup> of 0.902.</p><p> </p><p>Using MFs the reference hydrograph was condensed with a factor of 10 and 20. WT is a mathematical tool that can convert time-domain signals into time-frequency domain signals by passing through low and high-level filters. Passing sediment load time series through these filters create another synthetic BCs containing the frequential and spatial information with half the original signal's temporal length. Thus we also compare the modelling performance using WT generated synthetic BCs with MFs. Similarly, 36x1 to 36x10 processors of an HPC was used to simulate 16 km river reach containing 3,33,305 mesh nodes (with 1.5 m mesh resolution).  Interestingly, with a significant reduction in computational cost, there was a mild difference (R<sup>2</sup>=0.802 using MFs 10 and R<sup>2</sup>=0.763 using MFs 20) in model performance without using MFs during initial trials. Surprisingly, generating a synthetic time series using WT did not perform well. Therefore, hydrograph compression using MFs is found the best option to reduce the computational cost, significantly. Although the computational time reduced from 30 days to only 3 days using MFs and more precise BCs calibrated model with R<sup>2</sup>=0.70, WT poor performance needs to be still investigated.</p>

scholarly journals Does HadGEM3-GC3.1 GCM overestimate land precipitation at high resolution? A constraint based on observed river discharge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar V. Müller ◽  
Pier Luigi Vidale ◽  
Benoît Vannière ◽  
Reinhard Schiemann ◽  
Patrick C. McGuire
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Bias Correction ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
River Flow ◽  
River Mouth ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Land ◽  
Precipitation Increase

AbstractPrevious studies showed that high-resolution GCMs overestimate land precipitation when compared against observation-based data. Particularly, high-resolution HadGEM3-GC3.1 shows a significant precipitation increase in mountainous regions, where the scarcity of gauge stations increases the uncertainty of gridded observations and reanalyses. This work evaluates such precipitation uncertainties indirectly through the assessment of river discharge, considering that an increase of ~10% in land precipitation produces ~28% more runoff when the resolution is enhanced from 1° to 0.25°, and ~50% of the global runoff is produced in 27% of global land dominated by mountains. We diagnosed the river flow by routing the runoff generated by HadGEM3-GC3.1 low- and high-resolution simulations. The river flow is evaluated using a set of 344 monitored catchments distributed around the world. We also infer the global discharge by constraining the simulations with observations following a novel approach that implies bias correction in monitored rivers with two methods, and extension of the correction to the river mouth, and along the coast. Our global discharge estimate is 47.4±1.6×103km3yr−1, which is closer to the original high-resolution estimate (50.5 × 103km3yr−1) than to the low-resolution (39.6 × 103km3yr−1). The assessment suggests that high-resolution simulations performbetter in mountainous regions, either because the better-defined orography favours the placement of precipitation in the correct catchment, leading to a more accurate distribution of runoff, or the orographic precipitation increases, reducing the dry runoff bias of coarse resolution simulations. However, high-resolution slightly increases wet biases in catchments dominated by flat terrain. The improvement of model parameterizations and tuning may reduce the remaining errors in high-resolution simulations.

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