A comparison between flume and field bed load transport data and consequences for surface-based bed load transport prediction

Calculating bed load transport in steep boulder bed channels

[1] Steep, rough channels occupy a large fraction of the total channel length in mountainous regions. Most sediment mobilized on hillslopes must pass through these streams before reaching lower-gradient channels. Steep channels have wide grain size distributions that are composed of finer, more mobile sediment and large, rarely mobile grains. The large grains can bear a significant portion of t...

The Physical Basis for Anomalous Diffusion in Bed Load Transport

Recent studies have observed deviation from normal (Fickian) diffusion in sediment tracer dispersion that violates the assumption of statistical convergence to a Gaussian. Nikora et al. (2002) hypothesized that particle motion at short time scales is superdiffusive because of inertia, while long-time subdiffusion results from heavy-tailed rest durations between particle motions. Here we test th...

Variation in the reference Shields stress for bed load transport in gravel-bed streams and rivers

[1] The present study examines variations in the reference shear stress for bed load transport (tr) using coupled measurements of flow and bed load transport in 45 gravel-bed streams and rivers. The study streams encompass a wide range in bank-full discharge (1–2600 m/s), average channel gradient (0.0003–0.05), and median surface grain size (0.027–0.21 m). A bed load transport relation was form...

Impulse Framework for Unsteady Flows Reveals Superdiffusive Bed Load Transport

Sediment transport is an intrinsically stochastic process, and measurement of bed load in the environment is further complicated by the unsteady nature of river flooding. Here we present a methodology for analyzing sediment tracer data with unsteady forcing. We define a dimensionless impulse by integrating the cumulative excess shear velocity for the duration of measurement, normalized by grain...

Bed-load Transport of Mixed-size Sediment: Fractional Transport Rates, Bed Forms, and the Development of a Coarse Bed-surface Layer