HR: 1330h
AN: H52A-1145    [PDF]
TI: Downstream Hydraulic Geometry of Mountain Rivers
AU: * Wohl, E
EM: ellenw@cnr.colostate.edu
AF: Colorado State University, Dept of Geosciences, Ft. Collins, CO 80523 United States
AB: The concept of downstream hydraulic geometry (DHG) was developed for fully alluvial rivers that are presumed to be capable of continually adjusting their dimensions to changes in bankfull discharge. Mountain rivers, although mostly formed in alluvium, may behave differently because discharges along the channel lack the competence to move coarse clasts introduced from colluvial processes or glaciation, or because discontinuous bedrock exposures limit channel adjustment. Consequently, the DHG of mountain rivers could reflect bankfull flows; larger magnitude, less frequent flows; or non-fluvial processes such as debris flows. The research summarized here was designed to test whether traditional DHG concepts apply to mountain rivers, and to determine when correlations between velocity, flow depth, or width, and bankfull discharge, are strongly developed. Rivers with strongly developed DHG are defined here as those with r2 values $>$ 0.5 for at least two of the correlations. I hypothesize that a quantifiable threshold separates mountain rivers with well-developed DHG from those with poorly-developed DHG. This threshold can be expressed using a ratio of hydraulic driving forces to substrate resisting forces. As the ratio increases, the ability of bankfull flows to adjust channel dimensions should also increase. The hypothesis was tested using 8 datasets from mountain rivers in Alaska, Montana, Colorado, Panama, Nepal, and New Zealand. A ratio of either total stream power/D84, or unit stream power/D84, separates rivers with and without well-developed DHG. This approach is a simplification which ignores the presence of bedrock; the duration and frequency of flows as these affect stream power; and non-fluvial processes. However, the results suggest that mountain rivers with greater hydraulic driving forces are more likely to behave like fully alluvial rivers in terms of having well-developed DHG relations.
DE: 1815 Erosion and sedimentation
DE: 1821 Floods
DE: 1824 Geomorphology (1625)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting