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  • Colomer et al 2019 EFM accepted

    Rights statement: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10652-019-09685-x

    Accepted author manuscript, 2.51 MB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Consolidated sediment resuspension in model vegetated canopies

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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/12/2019
<mark>Journal</mark>Environmental Fluid Mechanics
Issue number6
Volume19
Number of pages24
Pages (from-to)1575–1598
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date4/04/19
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Aquatic plants, turbulence and sediment fluxes interact with each other in a complex, non-linear fashion. While most studies have considered turbulence as being generated primarily by mean flow, it can, however, also be generated by the action of the wind or by the night cooling convection at the surface of the water column. Here, we study turbulent interaction with vegetation and the effects it has on sediment suspension, in the absence of mean flow. In a water tank containing a base layer of sediment, turbulence was generated by oscillating a grid with the main objective being to determine the differences in sediment resuspension in sediment beds over a wide range of consolidation times (1h-3days), for a set of model canopies with different structural characteristics: density and flexibility, and for three types of sediment beds. The greater the consolidation time was, the lower the sediment resuspension. For bed consolidation times below six hours, the concentration of resuspended sediment was approximately constant and had no dependence on turbulence intensity. However, for higher bed consolidation times, between six and three days, the resuspension of the sediment beds increased with turbulence intensity (defined in terms of turbulent kinetic energy; TKE hereafter). The TKE within the sparse flexible canopies was higher than that in the sparse rigid canopies, while within the dense flexible canopies it was below that of the rigid canopies. Therefore, the sediment resuspension in the sparse flexible canopies was greater than that of the sparse rigid canopies. In contrast, the sediment resuspension in the dense flexible canopies was lower than that of the dense rigid canopies. Using different sediment types, the results of the study indicate that sediments with greater concentrations of small particles (muddy beds) have higher concentrations of resuspended sediment than sediment beds that are composed of larger particle sizes (sandy beds).

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The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10652-019-09685-x