Marked tracer particles provide a way to characterize the entrainment, transport and deposition of gravel in rivers.  Tracers can a) allow estimates of gravel transport rates during floods, b) provide estimates of the depth to which the gravel bed is reworked during floods and c) allow characterizing of bar-channel-bar exchange rates of gravel.  A series of novel experiments on gravel tracers have been completed.  The problem has been simplified using uniform particle size and plane-bed transport conditions.  The experiments allow for the first time characterization of a) the vertical variation of layer-specific gravel entrainment rates and b) a universal dimensionless function for the probability distribution of travel distances.  The analysis also provides a mechanistic link between active layer thickness and the probability density of bed elevation fluctuations.  This work constitutes Miguel Wong’s Ph.D. thesis.

Major accomplishments:

Papers
Cantelli, A., M. Wong, G. Parker, and C. Paola (2007), Numerical model linking bed and bank evolution of incisional channel created by dam removal, Water Resources Research, 43, doi:10.1029/2006WR005621.

Wong, M., et al. (2007), Experiments on dispersion of tracer stones under lower-regime plane-bed equilibrium bedload transport, Water Resources Research, 43, doi:10.1029/2006WR005172.

Wong, M., and G. Parker (2006), Flume experiments with tracer stones under bedload transport, in River, Coastal, and Estuarine Morphodynamics: RCEM 2005, edited by G. Parker and M. H. Garcia, pp. 131-139, Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Wong, Miguel (2006), Model for erosion, transport and deposition of tracer stones in gravel-bed streams, PhD thesis, Dept. of Civil Engineering, advisor G. Parker, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Wong, M., and G. Parker (2006), One-dimensional modeling of bed evolution in a gravel-bed river subject to a cycled flood hydrograph, Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface, 111, doi:10.1029/2006JF000478.

Wong, M., and G. Parker (2006), Reanalysis and correction of bed-load relation of Meyer-Peter and Muller using their own database, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 132(11), 1159-1168.