Effects of water supply

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The longitudinal profiles of Figures A to C visualize how water supply affects the main channel of a river reach. The vertical scale is exaggerated with respect to the horizontal scale. The reach can be kilometres to tens of kilometres long.

The intervention implies essentially that water is supplied continuously to the river at a certain location (A). The immediate effect is an increase in water levels along the river (B). This increase is not uniform, but varies from place to place. As a consequence, flow velocities differ from place to place too. The water levels and flow velocities can be calculated using 1D analytical models for gradually-varied flow or 1D numerical hydrodynamic models. The variations in flow velocity and, hence, the variations in the capacity to transport sediment give rise to a pattern of initial erosion and sedimentation along the river (B) that can be calculated using 1D analytical models for morphology on short time scales or 1D numerical morphodynamic models. Sedimentation over a relatively long distance occurs upstream of the intervention, whereas punctuated local erosion occurs downstream. This erosion advances downstream as a rarefaction wave. The increased flows downstream will also produce erosion in the mouth of the river.

Eventually, in the long run, the river reaches a new morphological equilibrium without further trends of erosion or sedimentation (C). All bed levels and water levels have become lower than at the start of the intervention. This means that the response of the river bed is particularly complex upstream of the intervention: sedimentation on a short term but erosion on a long term.

The longitudinal profiles in the diagrams provide a simplified picture. They do not include the response of channel width, bed sediment composition or vegetation. Nonetheless, they offer the key to understanding the relation between local pressures or measures and their effects far upstream and downstream.

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Diagrams of elementary morphological effects