Reply to comment by Z. B. Wang and H. J. De Vriend on “Depth integrated modeling of suspended sediment transport”

Abstract

[1] Let us first thankWang and De Vriend [2004] for their attention and their careful scrutiny of our paper. Let us also clarify that the motivation of our work was not to show that Galappatti’s [1983] model (hereinafter referred to as G83) was incorrect, but rather to develop a depth-averaged formulation of suspended sediment transport suitable for long-term morphological predictions, able to take into account weak non equilibrium effects of the kind often encountered in tidal as well as fluvial environments. Unfortunately, the mathematical framework appropriate to perform such investigation is precisely that proposed in G83, which forced us to revisit critically the latter work. [2] Let us come to the points raised by the Wang and De Vriend, which do concern G83’s approach rather than our formulation, whose validity does not seem to be questioned. The issue underlined in the discussion is whether or not G83’s perturbation scheme is correct and the basis for the Wang and De Vriend’s defense are the works of Wang [1992] and Wang and Ribberink [1986] (hereinafter referred to as W92 and WR86, respectively). We then also need to revisit the latter works.