How Fast or How Many? Sources of Intermittent Sediment Transport

Abstract

Near the threshold of grain motion, sediment transport is “on‐off” intermittent, characterized by large but rare bursts separated by long periods of low transport. Without models that can account for the effects of intermittency, measurements of average sediment flux can be in error by up to an order of magnitude. Despite its known presence and impact, it is not clear whether on‐off intermittency arises from the grain activity (the number of moving grains) or grain velocities, which together determine the sediment flux. We use laboratory flume experiments to show that the on‐off intermittency has its origins in the velocity distributions of grains that move by rolling along the bed, whereas grain activity is not on‐off intermittent. Incorporating the types of intermittency we identify into stochastic models of sediment transport could yield improved predictions of sediment flux, including physically based estimates of the uncertainty in time‐averaged sediment flux.