Assessing controls on the displacement of tracers in gravel-bed rivers

Abstract

Particle travel length is one of the main dimensions of bedload and strongly influences river morpho-dynamics, particularly when exploring the interactions between sediment transport and channel morphology. This process has been traditionally studied by using tagged stones that allow tracking the movement experienced by individual grains during transport episodes. In this paper, we relate measured particle travel lengths to flow metrics and river channel parameters. First, we link the event-based bedload volumes to the active-layer dimensions, and the product between the average bedload rates and the duration of competent flows. We then hypothesize that travel length depends on channel width, surface grain-size, particle size, bed structure, flow strength, and duration of competent flow. The results from this approach are, subsequently, tested with a set of tracer observations from eight rivers that were available in the literature. The relationship between travel length and flow metrics was found to be statistically strong and has the potential to allow us to quantitatively assess the one-day dynamics of particles moving along streambeds. We also analyzed the influence of channel morphology and bed structure and identified morphological signatures for particle transport in gravel-bed rivers.

The present work has been possible thanks to the financial support provided by the grant ACB17-44, co-funded by the post-doctoral ‘Clarín’ program-FICYT (Government of the Principality of Asturias) and the Marie Curie Co-Fund. This research was partly undertaken through the MorphPeak (CGL2016-78874-R) project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness and the European Regional Development Fund Scheme. Authors acknowledge the support from the Economy and Knowledge Department of the Catalan Government through the Consolidated Research Group ‘Fluvial Dynamics Research Group’ -RIUS (2017 SGR 459), as well as support from the project RIVERCHANGES-CGL2015-68824-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE).