scholarly journals Displacement length and velocity of tagged logs in the tagliamento river

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2s) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Ravazzolo ◽  
L. Mao ◽  
B. Garniga ◽  
L. Picco ◽  
M.A. Lenzi

Large wood enhance the dynamics of geomorphic processes in river systems, increases the morphological complexity of the channel bed, and provides habitats for fish and invertebrates. On the other side, if transported during high-magnitude events, large wood pieces can increase flood risks in sensitive places such as bridges and narrow cross sections prone to outbank flows. However, the dynamics and mobility of logs in rivers is poorly understood, especially in wide gravel-bed rivers. Recent studies have employed fixed video cameras to assess logs velocity, but little evidence is still available about travel length during flood events of different magnitude. This study was conducted in a valley reach of the Tagliamento river, located in the North East of Italy. The Tagliamento river is approximately 800 m wide in the study area, and is characterized by relatively high natural conditions and complex fluvial dynamics. Log mobility have been studied from June 2010 to October 2011, a period characterized by a relatively high magnitude flood in November 2010. Log mobility and displacement during floods have been measured by implanting active radio transmitters (RFID) in 113 logs and GPS track devices in 42 logs. The first devices allow to recover the log after flood events by using a portable antenna, and to derive the displacement length over the monitoring period, whereas the second devices allows to calculate instantaneous (1 sec) and average log velocity of moving logs. Recovery rate of logs equipped with RFID and GPS was about 50% and 60%, respectively. A preliminary analysis of the data collected indicates that there is a positive relationship between displacement length and the peak of flood events, as well as a positive relationship between log velocity and the flood magnitude. Also, a critical flow rate over which logs stranded on active bars can be transported has been identified. The ability to predict wood mobility in gravel-bed rivers could allow to define better strategies of river management and restoration, by improving the ability to understand wood transport processes and calibrate budgets of wood in rivers.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1609-1615
Author(s):  
D. Ravazzolo ◽  
G. Spreitzer ◽  
H. Friedrich ◽  
J. Tunnicliffe

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 690
Author(s):  
Maurizio Tavelli ◽  
Sebastiano Piccolroaz ◽  
Giulia Stradiotti ◽  
Giuseppe Roberto Pisaturo ◽  
Maurizio Righetti

The selective trapping and erosion of fine particles that occur in a gravel bed river have important consequences for its stream ecology, water quality, and overall sediment budgeting. This is particularly relevant in water bodies that experience periodic alternation between sediment supply-limited conditions and high sediment loads, such as downstream from a dam. While experimental efforts have been spent to investigate fine sediment erosion and transport in gravel bed rivers, a comprehensive overview of the leading processes is hampered by the difficulties in performing flow field measurements below the gravel crest level. In this work, a new two-dimensional, semi-implicit numerical scheme for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in the presence of deposited and erodible sediment is presented, and tested against analytical solutions and performing numerical tests. The scheme is mass-conservative, computationally efficient, and allows for a fine discretization of the computational domain. Overall, this makes the model suitable to appreciate small-scales phenomena such as inter-grain circulation cells, thus offering a valid alternative to evaluate the shear stress distribution, on which erosion and transport processes depend, compared to traditional experimental approaches. In this work, we present proof-of-concept of the proposed model, while future research will focus on its extension to a three-dimensional and parallelized version, and on its application to real case studies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fergus McNab ◽  
Taylor Schildgen ◽  
Jens Turowski ◽  
Andrew Wickert

<p>Periodic variation in Earth's orbit leads to variation in temperature and precipitation at its surface that are expected to exert a profound influence on landscape evolution. Indeed, cyclical fluctuations in sediment yield and grain size are a ubiquitous feature of the geological record, and recurrence times of geomorphological features such as fluvial terraces and alluvial fans often appear to reflect orbital periodicities. However, making quantitative interpretations of these records requires a detailed understanding of the ways in which sediment is transported from mountainous source regions along alluvial channels to depositional sinks. Sediment transport processes may dampen (i.e. buffer, 'shred') or amplify climate signals, such as changes in channel elevation or sediment flux, and may introduce a lag between them and the responsible external forcing. Recent modelling studies, mostly focused on the potential transmission of climatic signals to sedimentary archives, have predicted a wide range of behaviour and have proven challenging to test in the field. Here, we aim to clarify this discussion and also consider the potential preservation of climatic signals by fluvial terraces along alluvial channels. Our starting point is a recently developed model describing the long-profile evolution of gravel-bed rivers. This model is the first of its kind to be derived from first principles using physical relationships that have been extensively tested in laboratory settings, and takes a non-linear diffusive form. We employ perturbation theory to obtain approximate analytical solutions to the relevant equations that describe how channel elevation and sediment flux vary in response to periodic fluctuations in discharge and sediment supply. Our solutions contain expressions for response amplitudes and lag times as functions of downstream distance, system 'diffusivity' and forcing frequency. Lag times can be a significant fraction of the forcing period, implying that care is required when interpreting the timings of terrace formation in terms of changes in discharge or sediment supply. We also show that at the onset of periodic forcing, or a change in the dominant forcing period, alluvial channels undergo a transient response as they adjust to a new quasi-steady state. Importantly, this result implies that suites of fluvial terraces can be preserved without the need for significant local base-level fall. Since the expressions presented here are defined in terms of fundamental properties of alluvial channels, they should be readily applicable to real settings.</p>


Geology ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Pizzuto ◽  
W. C. Hession ◽  
M. McBride
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Donahue ◽  
◽  
José Antonio Constantine ◽  
Gregory B. Pasternack

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3030
Author(s):  
Marcos A. Martínez-Segura ◽  
Carmelo Conesa-García ◽  
Pedro Pérez-Cutillas ◽  
Pedro Martínez-Pagán ◽  
Marco D. Vásconez-Maza

Differences in deposit geometry and texture with depth along ephemeral gravel-bed streams strongly reflect fluctuations in bedload which are due to environmental changes at the basin scale and to morphological channel adjustments. This study combines electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) with datasets from borehole logs to analyse the internal geometry of channel cross-sections in a gravel-bed ephemeral stream (southeast Spain). The survey was performed through longitudinal and transverse profiles in the upper channel stretch, of 14 to 30 m in length and 3 to 6 m in depth, approximately. ERT values were correlated with data on sediment texture as grain size distribution, effective grain sizes, sorting, and particle shape (Zingg’s classification). The alluvial channel-fills showed the superposition of four layers with uneven thickness and arrangement: (1) the softer rocky substrate (<1000 Ω.m); (2) a thicker intermediate layer (1000 to 2000 Ω.m); and (3) an upper set composed of coarse gravel and supported matrix, ranging above 2000 Ω.m, and a narrow subsurface layer, which is the most resistive (>5000 Ω.m), corresponding to the most recent armoured deposits (gravel and pebbles). The ERT results coupled with borehole data allowed for determining the horizontal and vertical behaviour of the materials in a 3D model, facilitating the layer identification.


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