Variations of sediment size and size distribution along a river

Abstract:

Sediment material of a river bed is an important factor for river morphodynamics. Typically, alluvial rivers construct their own geometries based on the sediment size and its distribution that affect the sediment transport capacity in river channel networks, involving the issues of watershed sediment yield, flood controls and the evolution of flood plain, habitats, deltas and adjacent coastline. Hence, investigating grain size and size distribution of sediment materials on riverbeds is important for practical river management and assessment of landscape evolution. In this study, we collected total 43 sediment samplings along the Koaping River in southern Taiwan to analyze the grain size and its distribution along the river. Spatial distributions of different representative grain sizes, such as D₅₀ and D₉₀, and the size corresponding Manning's n values are analyzed and discussed in this paper. An exponential grain size distribution (GSD) formula is used to explore the relation between the frequency and size of riverbed sediment. Results show that the grain size has a wide range distribution in the river upstream but displays a narrow-range variation in the river downstream. For example, the sediment medium size D₅₀ ranges from 1.25 mm to 391.27 mm with an average of 49.36 mm in the upstream while it ranges from 0.135 mm to 0.625 mm with an average of 0.338 mm in the downstream. The best fitting curves of GSD with exponential scaling are analyzed with an empirical parameter Dc that is used to normalize the sediment grain size. This study finds that the empirical parameter Dc could be replaced by the sediment resentative size D₆₅ (65% of sediment smaller than it). The results obtained herein could be useful not only in analyzing sediment transport of a river but also in river management.