scholarly journals Dissolved and particulate nutrient transport dynamics of a small Irish catchment: the River Owenabue

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 2191-2200 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Harrington ◽  
J. R. Harrington

Abstract. The objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between water and sediment discharge on the transport of nutrients: nitrogen and phosphorus. Water discharge, suspended sediment concentration and dissolved and particulate forms of nitrogen and phosphorus were monitored on the 105 km2 River Owenabue catchment in Ireland. Water discharge was found to have an influence on both particulate and dissolved nutrient transport, but more so for particulate nutrients. The particulate portion of N and P in collected samples was found to be 24 and 39%, respectively. Increased particulate nitrogen concentrations were found at the onset of high discharge events, but did not correlate well to discharge. High concentrations of phosphorus were associated with increased discharge rates and the coefficient of determination (r2) between most forms of phosphorus and both discharge and suspended sediment concentrations were observed to be greater than 0.5. The mean TN yield is 4004 kg km−2 yr−1 for the full 29-month monitoring period with a mean PN yield of 982 kg km−2 yr−1, 25% of the TN yield with the contribution to the yield of PN and PP estimated to be 25 and 53% respectively. These yields represent a PN and PP contribution to the suspended sediment load of 5.6 and 0.28% respectively for the monitoring period. While total nitrogen and total phosphorus levels were similar to other European catchments, levels of bio-available phosphorus were elevated indicating a potential risk of eutrophication within the river.

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-133
Author(s):  
S. T. Harrington ◽  
J. R. Harrington

Abstract. The objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between water and sediment discharge on the transport of enriching nutrients: nitrogen and phosphorus. Water discharge, suspended sediment concentration and dissolved and particulate forms of nitrogen and phosphorus were monitored on the 105 km2 River Owenabue catchment in Ireland. Water discharge was found to have an influence on both particulate and dissolved nutrient transport, but more so for particulate nutrients. The particulate portion of N and P in collected samples was found to be 24 and 39% respectively. Increased particulate nitrogen concentrations were found at the onset of high discharge events, but did not correlate well to discharge. High concentrations of phosphorus were associated with increased discharge rates and coefficient of determination, r2, between most forms of phosphorus and both discharge and suspended sediment concentrations were observed to be greater than 0.5. The mean TN yield is 4004 kg km−2 yr−1 for the full 29 month monitoring period with a mean PN yield of 982 kg km−2 yr−1, 25% of the TN yield. The contribution to the yield of PN and PP estimated to be 25 and 53% respectively. These yields represent a PN and PP contribution to the suspended sediment load of 5.6 and 0.28% respectively for the monitoring period. While total nitrogen and total phosphorus levels were similar to other European catchments, levels of bio-available phosphorus were elevated indicating a potential eutrophication risk to the river where phosphorus was found to be the limiting nutrient.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-466

Artificial neural networks are one of the advanced technologies employed in hydrology modelling. This paper investigates the potential of two algorithm networks, the feed forward backpropagation (BP) and generalized regression neural network (GRNN) in comparison with the classical regression for modelling the event-based suspended sediment concentration at Jiasian diversion weir in Southern Taiwan. For this study, the hourly time series data comprised of water discharge, turbidity and suspended sediment concentration during the storm events in the year of 2002 are taken into account in the models. The statistical performances comparison showed that both BP and GRNN are superior to the classical regression in the weir sediment modelling. Additionally, the turbidity was found to be a dominant input variable over the water discharge for suspended sediment concentration estimation. Statistically, both neural network models can be successfully applied for the event-based suspended sediment concentration modelling in the weir studied herein when few data are available.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 4641-4657 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. B. Morera ◽  
T. Condom ◽  
P. Vauchel ◽  
J.-L. Guyot ◽  
C. Galvez ◽  
...  

Abstract. Hydro-sedimentology development is a great challenge in Peru due to limited data as well as sparse and confidential information. This study aimed to quantify and to understand the suspended sediment yield from the west-central Andes Mountains and to identify the main erosion-control factors and their relevance. The Tablachaca River (3132 km2) and the Santa River (6815 km2), located in two adjacent Andes catchments, showed similar statistical daily rainfall and discharge variability but large differences in specific suspended-sediment yield (SSY). In order to investigate the main erosion factors, daily water discharge and suspended sediment concentration (SSC) datasets of the Santa and Tablachaca rivers were analysed. Mining activity in specific lithologies was identified as the major factor that controls the high SSY of the Tablachaca (2204 t km2 yr−1), which is four times greater than the Santa's SSY. These results show that the analysis of control factors of regional SSY at the Andes scale should be done carefully. Indeed, spatial data at kilometric scale and also daily water discharge and SSC time series are needed to define the main erosion factors along the entire Andean range.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caiwen Shu ◽  
Guangming Tan ◽  
Yiwei Lv ◽  
Quanxi Xu

AbstractUsing experimental data of near-bed suspended sediment concentrations at five typical hydrometric stations of the Three Gorges Reservoir at the early reserving stage, the differences were investigated between the common method and improved method during flood seasons and non-flood seasons. The impact of taking measurements below 0.2 times the water depth on the results was discussed. The results show that the average discharges and velocities at each station calculated by the common method were slightly larger than those calculated by the improved method. Regarding the suspended sediment concentration at each station, the errors in the reservoir and downstream channels in dynamic equilibrium state were small, and the largest errors occurred where the river bed was strongly scoured in the downstream reach below the large dam. There was no significant relationship between water discharge and flow velocity, and the missed measurement phenomenon also occurred. The sediment discharge error was affected by the suspended sediment concentration, implying that errors usually occurred in channels with serious erosion during flood seasons. The correction coefficients (R2) of sediment discharge at each station were given during the experiment, which showed that the sediment discharges at the hydrometric stations where a large amount of sediment transport occurred near the river bottom, needed to be modified. Furthermore, the test methods proposed in this study were applied to calculate the sediment discharges of three rivers, and the results indicate that this method can narrow the gap between bathymetric comparisons and sediment load measurements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Housseyn Bouzeria ◽  
Abderrahmane N. Ghenim ◽  
Kamel Khanchoul

AbstractIn this study, we present the performances of the best training algorithm in Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural networks for prediction of suspended sediment discharges in Mellah catchment. Time series data of daily suspended sediment discharge and water discharge from the gauging station of Bouchegouf were used for training and testing the networks. A number of statistical parameters, i.e. root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), coefficient of efficiency (CE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were used for performance evaluation of the model. The model produced satisfactory results and showed a very good agreement between the predicted and observed data. The results also showed that the performance of the MLP model was capable to capture the exact pattern of the sediment discharge data in the Mellah catchment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangyao Gao

<p>Ecological restoration (ER) has strong consequences on hydrological responses. The China’s Loess Plateau (LP) contributed nearly 90% of sediment load in the Yellow River, which was once the world’s largest carrier of fluvial sediment. ER efforts including the soil and water conservation measures (SWCMs, especially terracing and construction of check dams) since 1950s and large-scale ecological restoration campaigns such as Grain-for-Green project (i.e., returning sloping cropland to afforestation and pasture reestablishment) in 1999, has resulted in extensive land use/cover change, leading to considerable decreases of streamflow (Q), suspended sediment yield (SSY) and sediment concentration (C) in the LP over the past 60 years. However, it remains challenging to quantify the impacts of ER and climate variability on declines of Q and especially SSY. In this study, we formulate the notion of elasticity of sediment discharge, by associating SSY change to climate variability and ER over the period 1950s to 2014. Our results strongly support the hypothesis that changes to both streamflow volumes and to the suspended sediment concentration versus water discharge (C-Q) relationships result in reduced SSY, so that streamflow is reduced but runs clearer. We find that two of the ER strategies resulted in weaker relative impacts of climate variability, largely by reducing streamflow (by 55% to 75%). Meanwhile, ER predominantly decreased SSY (by 63% to 81%). Regarding ER practices, (i) the predominant measure acting to reduce SSY changed, over time, from engineering to reforestation; (ii) check-dams preferentially act to regulate the C-Q relationships whereas reforestation preferentially acts to moderate streamflow. Overall, our results suggest that a combination of engineering and vegetation measures is critical to achieving high-efficiency ER. While change to the ER strategy increased the efficiency of streamflow for SSY control, the lost water discharge per unit SSY reduction increased from 5.2 to 6.4 m<sup>3</sup>·t<sup>-1</sup>. Conflicting demands for water necessitate that further ER should target precision management by revegetation of targeted areas in the Loess Plateau.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Sanja MANOJLOVIĆ ◽  
Predrag MANOJLOVIĆ ◽  
Mrdjan DJOKIĆ

The study is concerned with determination of the trend of water discharge, suspended sediment concentration and sediment load in the most downstream profile of the Velika Morava River in the period 1967-2007. The gradual trend test (Mann–Kendall test – MK test) and abrupt change test (Pettitt test) have been employed on annual, seasonal and monthly water discharge, suspended sediment concentration and suspended sediment load for the given time series. Both the Mann–Kendall and Pettitt tests indicate that water discharge showed no significant annual trend or abrupt shift. However, annual suspended sediment concentration and sediment load showed significant decreasing trends (α=0.001). The average decrease of suspended sediment load transport amounted to 3.15 t/km2/yr. The Pettitt test results showed that the change-point year was detected in 1982. The average specific sediment load amounted to 134.6 t/km2/yr before the transition year, and 36.5 t/km2/yr after the transition year, i.e., it was reduced by 73 %. In the intra-annual distribution, the MK test results indicate that the most pronounced decreasing trend (α=0.001) of the sediment load is during summer and winter. Strong seasonal and monthly variability in sediment load was found. Sediment was strongly transported during spring months, in the period of frequent flood events. Almost 50% of the annual sediment is transported during March, April and May. Analysis of the discharge and suspended sediment concentration relationship revealed the existence of hysteresis loop in the shape of figure eight. The results of this study confirm the complex and heterogeneous nature of sediment response in the Velika Morava River.


Author(s):  
N. I. Tananaev ◽  
R. Teisserenc ◽  
T. Le Dantec

Field studies, including high-frequency sampling for suspended sediment flux estimation, were conducted in 20142016 in the city of Igarka, at the outlet of the Yenisei River. During spring freshet of each year, multiple suspended sediment concentration (SSC) peaks were observed, irrelated to water discharge fluctuations. The form of hysteresis loops evidences the importance of input from local in-channel sediment sources, i.e. banks and bedforms, and scouring of bed material, deposited during winter, in observed sharp SSC peaks. On the falling stage of the freshet, longer peaks are related to sediment waves from major tributaries, notably the Nizhnyaya Tunguska River. Annual sediment load was calculated based on the daily water discharge and observed SSC data, using sediment rating curves and LOADEST models as two reference methods. Mean annual suspended sediment load of the Yenisei River in Igarka is estimated at 8.1 0.5 mln t., which significantly exceeds previously published values for the 19702001 period, from 4.6 to 5.9 mln t. Cumulative sediment load for 20142016 totals 24.2 2.1 mln t.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document