Bedload transport estimation in mountainous intermittent rivers and streams

Rivers and streams with the flow, sediment, and habitat seasonality are termed as intermittent rivers and streams (IRS). IRS are the main water bodies in arid and semi-arid regions of the world but are also found in the temperate and humid environment, where they are particularly draining headwater streams. Thus, a large part of headwater streams in the mountainous regions behave as intermittent water bodies, where the steep channel slope and a wide variety of sediment sizes add to their hydrosedimentological complexity. Bedload transport as an important sedimentological characteristic of mountainous IRS and essential for planning sediment management strategies, is far from being well understood. Often the knowledge of lowland perennial rivers is adapted to steep IRS, which may lead to an overestimation of bedload transport mainly due to the overestimation of near-bed flow characteristics. Despite the development of numerous methods for modifying near-bed flow parameters for steep IRS such as Double-averaging of Navier-Stokes equation and flow resistance methods modifications for steep IRS, their application is limited to small domains and laboratory conditions. In this research, the flow resistance, main determinant of near-bed flow characteristic is estimated using a regime channel approach. In this approach, the flow resistance is estimated on reach-scale based on the channel’s regime dimension, slope and bankfull discharge assuming an IRS is in regime state (equilibrium condition). A channel’s regime state represents a long-term average characteristic of a river and does not significantly change over time. A channel reach of a constant slope develops a certain flow resistance during its regime state development to resist the change imposed by bankfull discharge and maintain a specific regime geometry, slope, and sediment grain size. 2D- hydromorphological computer simulations are employed to simulate the development of channel regime state for several cases of initial geometries, slopes, and grain sizes by steering the flow resistance. This modifies the riverbed shear stress by the ratio of total flow resistance to grain resistance also known as relative flow resistance µ in order to account for flow energy dissipation on resistance sources such as macro-roughness elements (MRE), and bedforms. Alternatively, two cases of MRE as a main flow resistance inducer is built as non-erodible trapezoidal shapes (i) randomly distributed over the channel bed, and (ii) arranged in cascade bedforms are used in regime channel simulations. MRE protects the channel by reducing the exposed riverbed to erosion and changing the flow characteristics in their vicinity. Regime channel simulations are performed on artificial channels of initial slopes between 0.0% to 10% and initial dimensions of 5.5 m x 200 m and 16.5 m x 200 m resembling a fixed (laboratory) and an extended-width (natural wide channel) condition. Three channel slope combination cases representing a natural channel reach which can be composed of one or more constant slope stretch are also studied beside single slope channels. Steady state simulations are performed for six sediment grain size (GSD) sets, which cover a wide spectrum of naturally occurring sediment sizes. The simulation results show a power-law relationship between µ and regime channel slopes for all channel dimensions, reach combinations, GSD, initial slopes and with (R1) and without sediment feeding (R). The increase in relative flow resistance (µ) with regime channel slope is well reproduced in form of bedforms. Regime channels developed step-pool to cascade bedforms for steep slopes and plane- to riffle bed for gentle slopes channels. The relationship between µ and regime slope derived using regime channel simulation approach exhibits good agreement with some field measurement of flow resistance for mountainous rivers and streams. The approach is applied on two IRS case studies with observed data in Kabul River basin, Afghanistan to estimate bedload transport. The relative flow resistance resulted from models calibration showed good agreement with those derived from test channels regime development simulation. The outcome of channel regime simulation with presence of MRE as geometrical shapes produced a logarithmic-law with a horizontal asymptote relationship between MRE concentrations and channel regime slopes. Similar results are also reported from flume experiments that the ratio of drag to total shear stress increases rapidly when the MRE are sufficiently distant. Regime channels develop micro-channels around MRE, where the bulk of bedload transport occur. For MRE arrangements as cascades, the results show a power-law relationship between channel regime slope and step-pool dimensions λ = LD/DB. The results obtained are in good agreement with field measurement of naturally occurring and artificially built λ relationship with SR. Future studies can further enrich the validation of this approach by applying it to other study sites. Present modelling tools have their limitations when dealing with strong geometries which is often the case for mountain rivers, therefore, improvement in modelling techniques is required to flexibly deal with abrupt changes in riverbed geometry for instance when implementing MRE as main flow resistance inducer