Impacts of Consolidation Time on the Critical Hydraulic Gradient of Newly Deposited Silty Seabed in the Yellow River Delta

The silty seabed in the Yellow River Delta (YRD) is exposed to deposition, liquefaction, and reconsolidation repeatedly, during which seepage flows are crucial to the seabed strength. In extreme cases, seepage flows could cause seepage failure (SF) in the seabed, endangering the offshore structures. A critical condition exists for the occurrence of SF, i.e., the critical hydraulic gradient (icr). Compared with cohesionless sands, the icr of cohesive sediments is more complex, and no universal evaluation theory is available yet. The present work first improved a self-designed annular flume to avoid SF along the sidewall, then simulated the SF process of the seabed with different consolidation times in order to explore the icr of newly deposited silty seabed in the YRD. It is found that the theoretical formula for icr of cohesionless soil grossly underestimated the icr of cohesive soil. The icr range of silty seabed in the YRD was 8–16, which was significantly affected by the cohesion and was inversely proportional to the seabed fluidization degree. SF could “pump” the sediments vertically from the interior of the seabed with a contribution to sediment resuspension of up to 93.2–96.8%. The higher the consolidation degree, the smaller the contribution will be.

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Regional estimation of daily to annual evapotranspiration with MODIS data in the Yellow River Delta wetland

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions ◽

10.5194/hessd-6-2301-2009 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 2301-2335 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

L. Jia ◽

G. Xi ◽

S. Liu ◽

C. Huang ◽

Y. Yan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Energy Balance ◽

Land Surface ◽

Yellow River ◽

Yellow River Delta ◽

River Delta ◽

The Yellow River ◽

Vegetation Types ◽

The Yellow River Delta ◽

The Yrd

Abstract. Evapotranspiration (ET) from the wetland of the Yellow River Delta is one of the important components in the water cycle, which represents the water consumption by the plants and evaporation from the water and the non-vegetated surfaces. Reliable estimates of the total evapotranspiration from the wetland is useful information both for understanding the hydrological process and for water management to protect this natural environment. Due to the heterogeneity of the vegetation types and canopy density and of soil water content over the wetland (specifically over the natural reserve areas), it is difficult to estimate the regional evapotranspiration extrapolating measurements or calculations usually done locally for a specific land cover type. Remote sensing can provide observations of land surface conditions with high spatial and temporal resolution and coverage. In this study, a model based on the Energy Balance method was used to calculate daily ET using instantaneous observations of land surface reflectance and temperature from MODIS when the data were available on clouds-free days. A time series analysis algorithm is then applied to generate a time series of daily ET over a year period by filling the gaps in the observation series due to clouds. A detailed vegetation classification map is used to help identifying areas of various wetland vegetation types in the YRD wetland. Such information is also used to improve the parameterizations in the energy balance model to improve the accuracy of ET estimates. This study shows that spatial variation of ET is significant over the same vegetation class at a given time and over different vegetation types in different seasons in the YRD wetland.

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