Linking River Management-Induced Perturbations of Hydrologic and Sediment Regimes to Geomorphic Processes Along a Highly-Dynamic Gravel-Bed River: Snake River, WY.

Abstract:

Encroachment of human development onto river floodplains creates a need to stabilize rivers and provide flood protection. Structural interventions, such as levees, often perturb hydrologic and sediment regimes and thus can initiate morphological responses. An understanding of how human activities affect river morphodynamics and trigger channel change is needed to anticipate future river responses and facilitate effective restoration. This study examines approximately 66 km of the Snake River, WY, USA, and links sediment transport processes to channel form and behavior by developing a morphological sediment budget that spans both a natural, unconfined reach and a reach confined by artificial levees. Sediment transport rates are inferred from the morphological sediment budget and a bed mobility study is used to estimate entrainment thresholds that allow us to link the hydrological regime during the sediment budget period to the observed channel changes. Results indicate that lateral constriction by levees triggers a positive feedback mechanism by incising the bed, focusing flow energy, thus increasing transport capacity, and leading to armoring of the bed. In other systems, armoring promotes widening of the channel but in this case levees prevent widening and the channel instead migrates across the braidplain rapidly, producing further erosion of bars and vegetated islands that is expressed as negative net volumetric changes and increased sediment transport rates. Furthermore, decreased slopes and reduced discharges due to dam regulation in the upstream unconfined reach cause gravel sheets to stall on bars and in other areas of storage, creating a spatial discontinuity in sediment conveyance downstream, and thus contributing to the sediment deficit within the leveed reach.