Kootenai River Experiment: An overview of river flow observations and modeling (Invited)
Abstract
Novel river flow observations were obtained during a recent field experiment at the Kootenai River, Idaho, in August 2010. The focus of the experiment was on the 3D velocity structure of the flow, secondary circulations, and concurrent large scale turbulence as function of variation in bed level and river alignment. A combination of in-situ observations and three-dimensional (3D) modeling is used to explore the dynamics of river flow in two distinctly different reaches of the same river. The braided reach exhibits fast flows (typically larger than 0.5 m/s) in relatively shallow water (~3 m), whereas the meandering reach has smaller flows (less than 0.5 m/s) and is significantly deeper (approximately 8 m). In the braided reach, a suite of instruments was deployed to examine the flow dynamics including a mobile frame equipped with an ADV, horizontal-facing custom ADCP, and a coherent lagged array of EM current meters to examine temporal and spatial turbulence characteristics. ADCPs mounted on small stationary catamarans were deployed to measure the mean vertical structure of the river flow at a large number of locations (>100). Unmanned vehicles were used in the meandering reach to examine the vertical structure of the mean river flow and in both reaches GPS-equipped drifters were used to map the Lagrangian river flow dynamics. GPS-equipped drifters were also used in combination with dye experiments to describe river mixing. Preliminary DELFT3D model simulations are used to identify gaps in our modeling approach/concepts by examining model-observation mismatches. An overview of the field observations and model simulations will be presented at the conference.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFMOS53D..01R
- Keywords:
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- 1805 HYDROLOGY / Computational hydrology;
- 1856 HYDROLOGY / River channels;
- 1860 HYDROLOGY / Streamflow