Take a chance flume meaning9/6/2023 In another research project, I showed that these path-lengths were closely coupled, and could be approximated by, the spacing between bars in a braided river. Rather than tracking each particle as it moves downstream, we are developing morphodynamic models based on sediment ‘path-lengths,’ which are simply distributions of how far particles are moving once they are eroded in a flood. One way to deal with the inherent complexity of modeling braided rivers is to experiment with novel ways for computing sediment transport. Unfortunately such long-term predictions (10’s-100’s of years) that document channel change can be taxing on even powerful computers, given that they need to track individual grains of sediment as they move through the system, and perform a great deal of accounting to compute channel bed change through time (a concept we refer to as morphodynamics). In such instances, we can turn to modeling as a tool with which to predict the form of braided rivers in response to shifting water and sediment inputs. Working with Peter Ashmore and Sarah Peirce at the University of Western Ontario and with Joe Wheaton and James Hensleigh at Utah State University, I conducted laboratory flume experiments at the University of Western Ontario.īed elevation change on the River Feshie from 2006 to 2007, resulting from one year of floods. I first sought to test the hypothesis described above, that particle travel distances during floods are mirrored by the average spacing between bars. That is, we can predict sediment dynamics and, through time, channel evolution just by examining the spacing of channel bars? I’ve spent the last several years testing this hypothesized form-process linkage and its implications in gravel-bed braided rivers in the laboratory and in the field. If that hypothesis is true, it gives us a chance to address sediment transport in a very simple way. In 2009, researchers at the University of Western Ontario hypothesized that the average spacing between bars might be a predictor of the average particle travel distance during a flood, or the particles’ “path lengths.” In the field and in laboratory flumes, many geomorphologists have noticed that these bars are typically where they find particles deposited after a flood. Note the regularity with which flow divergences occur, shown in red these mark the upstream edge of a series of mid-channel bars. A digital elevation model of the River Rees in New Zealand (data courtesy of James Brasington, Queen Mary University of London).
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