Prediction of bed load transport on small gravel-bed streams

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Hydroscience and Engineering, Philadelphia, PA, September 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1860/732Rates and size distributions of bed load were calculated using 3 transport relations and compared to data collected on three streams with sand-gravel beds in the Goodwin Creek Experimental Watershed in north central Mississippi, USA. Bed load transport rates were greatly over predicted by two of the three relations with the third yielding values closer to the measured values. Predictions of the median size of the bed load as compared to measured values were within about 100 percent for all three relations. The effect of bed material size distributions on the predicted rates from the 3 relations was evaluated and it was found that bed material sizes substantially larger than those measured in the field were needed to yield predicted rates close to those measured in the field for two of the three relations. The third relation yielded transport rates within about 50 percent of the measured rates using the measured bed material surface size distribution as input