NCR DAYS 2018: The Future River.

Deltares

Analysis of sediment transport dynamics in the Piave River

Basin to define hotspots
a
of geomorphic
a
change.
a
Usman Ali Khan Alessandro Cattapan Mário J. Franca
a
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Science and Engineering Department Westvest 7, 2611 AX
Delft, The Netherlands

Keywords — River network, Sediment Transport

Introduction river basin is defined as the distribution of

Rivers are dynamic systems changing both in distances of each link from the outlet along
space and time. Beside natural processes, the network. The adopted framework
human’s activities also influences sediment translates the width function into an
transport at basin scale in a number of ways e.g. “environmental response” function
through the construction of sediment retaining (characteristic for each sediment size)
impounding structures such as dams or through performing a scaling of the former through
sediment extraction (Syvitski & Kettner, 2011). different velocities which are functions of the
Sources of sediment might vary from one river to hydraulic properties of each link in the
another e.g in mountainous areas rivers are network (Fig. 2).
usually fed by mass movements (i.e. landslides
and debris-flows) which are singular in time and 1. River network development
space, whereas in low land rivers usual sources In this study a 30 m horizontal resolution
are river banks and the nearby watershed, which DEM of the Piave River basin has been
typically act continuously and diffusively along the obtained from tiles (5x5° or
channel network. 1000 km x 1000 km) downloaded from the
In the last 80 years the Piave River basin has European Environment Agency’s website.
been under heavy anthropogenic pressure due to The DEM tiles have been mosaicked and
the construction of a large amount of dams and clipped at extent up to the study area and
gravel extraction which altered the morphology of projected into WGS_1984_UTM_33N
the river. coordinate system in the ArcGIS. For the
The main objective of this research is to identify delineation of the river network a threshold
2
the areas within the Piave River basin (Italy) that, limit on the drainage area of 3 km has been
due to their long term sediment transport applied. The obtained network is
dynamics, will represent hotspots of geomorphic represented in Fig. 1.
change. This objective will be reached using a
new sediment routing framework that takes into
account the geomorphological structure of the
river network and allows the identification of the
river reaches where the transport dynamics of
different sediment types are expected to
produced higher sedimentation.

Methodology of Research

Model Framework
The modelling framework adopted in this
research (Czuba, J. A., and E. Foufoula-
Georgiou, 2014) schematises the river network as
a series of directionally interconnected links.
Sediments are routed from the sources to the
outlet of the basin along different pathways. Each
link in a pathway will therefore be at a certain
distance from the outlet. The width function of the
Figure 1 Extent of Piave River Basin drainage network
which composed of around 1000 links with mean
* Corresponding author length of 1.8 km and total length of approximately
Email address: Khan43@unesco-ihe.org (U.A. Khan) 2000 km.

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 SESSION IA
MORPHO- AND HYDRODYNAMIC PROCESSES

2. Scaling of geometrical and hydraulic protection agency of the Veneto Region

properties (ARPAV), therefore including the
Leopold and Maddock (1953) expressed the antropogenic effects, like withdrawals for
hydraulic characteristics of a river reach in the hydropower production, lamination of floods
form of power functions of discharge in which B is performed by reservoirs etc..
the channel width, H is the flow depth, V is the
flow velocity, Q is the flow discharge, and a, b, c, Expected Results
d, k, and m are empirical coefficients and The expected outcomes of this research
exponents respectively. work include the definition of the areas of
major geomorphic change and the analysis
b d
B=aQ , H=cQ , V= kQ
m
(1) of the effects of major hydraulic
infrastructures on the long term dynamics of
In order to perform the hydraulic scaling of the basin. This comparison will provide
geometrical properties, the reference discharge insights on the relative importance of
will be chosen as the bankfull discharge; defined different reservoirs and diversions on the
as the discharge with 2-years return period (Q2). morphology of the Piave River basin and
This discharge will be defined fitting discharge suggestions for their management.
data collected at several cross-sections with a
Gumbel’s distribution. Hydraulic geometry
characteristics (B, H and V) at each gauge and
downstream will be developed following the
approach used by Czuba, J. A. and E. Foufoula-
Georgiou (2014) for the Minnesota River Basin,
therefore linking the hydraulic and geometrical
properties to the upstream drainage area.

3. Sediment input to the network

Sediments will be added to river network
following a Poisson process in the shape of
3
parcels having a constant volume Vp= 10 m
(independent parcels can be considered as a
coherent unit of sediments) for example, an input
3 -1
with rate of 40 m yr would be broken into four
parcels each as independent inputs recurring
through time with interarrival times randomly
selected from an exponential distribution with a
mean of one year. The model will simulate the
sediment transport dynamics for a 500 year time
span; during this period parcels will move from
upstream to downstream towards the basin outlet
which is chosen at Nervesa della Battaglia.

4. Model simulations
The modelling framework described above will be
applied in the two following setups:
 ”Natural” river network
The DEM will be changed in order to consider an
idealized “natural” condition where all the existing
reservoirs have been removed. Moreover, the
scaling of the hydraulic properties of each link
with the drainage area will be performed adding
the withdrawals due to hydropower and irrigation
infrastructures, therefore trying to reproduce the
“natural” flow of the basin.
 Actual river network
The model will be applied to the actual DEM as
downloaded and the scaling of Q2 on the
drainage area will be performed using the
measured discharge data in a series of gauging
stations monitored by the environmental
Figure 2 Conversion of Width function to process
scaled width function whereas process is sediment
transport
References
Syvitski, J. P. M., & Kettner, A. (2011). Sediment flux
and the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and
Engineering Sciences, 369(1938), 957–975.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0329.
Czuba, J. A., Foufoula-Georgiou, E., Gran, K. B.,
Belmont, P., & Wilcock, P. R. (2014). Interplay
between spatially explicit sediment sourcing,
hierarchical river-network structure, and in-channel
bed material sediment transport and storage
dynamics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth
Surface, 122(5), 1090–1120.
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JF003965

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