Plant Morphology Impacts Bedload Sediment Transport
Name
Geophysical Research Letters - 2024 - Liu - Plant Morphology Impacts Bedload Sediment Transport.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.47 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c96ca6a46ed4a4901b978bb039f664dd
Author(s)
Liu, Chao
Shan, Yuqi
He, Li
Li, Fujian
Liu, Xingnian
Nepf, Heidi
Date Issued
June 14, 2024
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Liu, C., Shan, Y., He, L., Li, F., Liu, X., & Nepf, H. (2024). Plant morphology impacts bedload sediment transport. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2024GL108800.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Bedload sediment transport plays an important role in the evolution of rivers, marshes and deltas. In these aquatic environments, vegetation is widespread, and plant species have unique morphology. However, the impact of real plant morphology on flow and sediment transport has not been quantified. This study used model plants with real plant morphology, based on the aquatic species Phragmites australis, Acorus calamus and Typha latifolia. The frontal area of these species increases away from the bed, which leads to higher near-bed velocity than would be predicted from depth-average frontal area. A plant morphology coefficient was defined to quantify the impact of vertically-varied plant frontal area. Laboratory experiments confirmed that the plant morphology coefficient improved the prediction of near-bed velocity, near-bed turbulent kinetic energy and bedload transport rate in canopies with realistic morphology. Plant morphology can alter transport rates by up to an order of magnitude, relative to the assumption of uniform morphology.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
10.1029/2024gl108800
