CSDMS 2016 annual meeting poster TongWan

From CSDMS
Presentation provided during SEN - CSDMS annual meeting 2016

Bedload sediment modeling at a global scale based on the WBMsed model

Tong Wan, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Alabama, United States. twan@crimson.ua.edu
Sagy Cohen, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Alabama, United States.

Abstract:

River sediment dynamics is a key driver in fluvial and terrestrial research. Sediment indicators are often used in determining river change regime and sequentially river evolution. Since only a small fraction of global rivers are monitored for their sediment dynamics, our understanding of the processes and drivers affecting large global rivers is still lacking. Numerical modeling can remedy some of these observational deficiencies but remain a challenge, particularly at large, global scales. Bedload transport accounts for less than 10% of the fluvial sediment transferred from continental uplands to continental margins on a continental scale, however it is an important component of fluvial sediment budget for its important role in many fluvial processes and its key influence on river morphodynamics.
Here we present a first-order global scale riverine bedload flux model. We are developing a bedload module within the WBMsed modeling framework based on existed bedload formulas. One of the key challenges in accurately solving bedload formulae at course spatial scales is accurate description of riverbed slope. We also present a novel global riverine slope layer which we will use as input to the WBMsed model. Future work will include an extensive validation procedure based on observed data and global scale analysis of bedload flux dynamics.


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