Responses of river bed evolution to flow-sediment process changes after Three Gorges Project in middle Yangtze River: A case study of Yaojian reach

Abstract

The Three Gorges Project (TGP) has changed the flow-sediment process in the middle Yangtze River. For navigation purposes, there is an urgent need to study the changes of the river regime over a long-term period and the shoal-channel evolution over different seasons since the completion of the TGP. Based on analysis of the measured data and the results of a two-dimensional mathematical model, the changes of the river regime and river bed evolution in the Yaojian reach downstream of the TGP were studied. Results show that a high sediment transport flux helps to keep the main flow in the North Branch, while a low sediment transport flux helps to keep the main flow in the South Branch. Thus, the main branch will not change in the near future because of the low sediment transport load. In this study, the flow-sediment process adjusted by the TGP was restored to the conditions before the TGP, and the river bed evolution under the adjusted and non-adjusted flow-sediment conditions was calculated. After the completion of the TGP, the reservoir storage accelerated the flood recession process and decreased the erosion by 11.9% under the flow-sediment conditions in 2010, and the deposition in the flood season decreased by 56.4%.