Abstract
Local widening in a channelized river is a common practice in restoration projects. The lateral embayments built for this purpose in the river banks are partially filled up by fine sediments. This allows the formation of aquatic habitats with hydraulic and morphologic diversity. However, the design of these lateral cavities may be compromised by the fluctuations in the water discharge. To address this problem, systematic experimental investigations have been carried out with five different fluctuating hydrograph scenarios. Water depth, sediment concentration and area covered by the settled sediments are analysed in each experiment. The process of sedimentation in the lateral embayments proved to be, in general, resilient to flow fluctuations. However, there were several differences observed during the high flow phase fluctuation phase depending on the geometric configuration of the embayments and the applied hydrograph: (i) a higher peak in discharge means that more sediments are resuspended and a complete remobilization of the in-cavity sediment deposits is possible. (ii) Long and short cavities are more resilient to high flow events than cavities with an intermediate length.
Highlights
Within the framework of river restoration projects, local widening in a river reach is commonly considered for providing shelters for the plants and animals of the riparian habitat
The results of this study show that the in-cavity sediment deposits in a channel equipped with lateral embayments are highly resilient to flow fluctuations
The dynamics of the in-cavity sediment deposits are influenced by two factors: (i) the cavity aspect ratio (AR), it determines the impact of the high flow phase
Summary
Within the framework of river restoration projects, local widening in a river reach is commonly considered for providing shelters for the plants and animals of the riparian habitat. This restoration approach causes the appearance of areas with low velocity where the fine sediments transported in suspension face a sudden drop in the turbulence intensity. Little attention was drawn to the analysis of the role of sediment transport under these conditions
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