Recognition of Fluvial Bank Erosion Along the Main Stream of the Yangtze River

Recognizing the risk of fluvial bank erosion is an important challenge to ensure the early warning and prevention or control of bank collapse in river catchments,including in the Yangtze River.This study introduces a geomorphons-based algorithm to extract river bank erosion information by adjusting the flatness from multibeam echo-sounding data.The algorithm maps ten subaqueous morphological elements,including the slope,footslope,flat,ridge,peak,valley,pit,spur,hollow,and shoulder.Twentyone flatness values were used to build an interpretation strategy for the subaqueous features of riverbank erosion.The results show that the bank scarp,which is the erosion carrier,is covered by slope cells when the flatness is 10°.The scour pits and bank scars are indicated by pit cells near the bank and hollow cells in the bank slope at a flatness of 0°.Fluvial subaqueous dunes are considered an important factor accelerating bank erosion,particularly those near the bank toe;the critical flatness of the dunes was evaluated as 3°.The distribution of subaqueous morphological elements was analyzed and used to map the bank erosion inventory.The analysis results revealed that the near-bank zone,with a relatively large water depth,is prone to form large scour pits and a long bank scarp.Arc collapse tends to occur at the long bank scarp to shorten its length.The varied assignment of flatness values among terrestrial,marine,and fluvial environments is discussed,concluding that diversified flatness values significantly enable fluvial subaqueous morphology recognition.Consequently,this study provides a reference for the flatness-based recognition of fluvial morphological elements and enhances the targeting of subaqueous signs and risks of bank failure with a range of multibeam bathymetric data.

Sediment-Loading Processes in a Forested Catchment: Modeling and Observations

In order to investigate sediment-loading processes in a catchment, the daily time series of river discharge and sediment load were applied to a semi-distributed model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The time series of discharge and sediment load were obtained by monitoring the river stage and water turbidity of the Oikamanai River, Hokkaido, Japan, in the rainfall season (April-November) of 2011-2014. The catchment is forested (ca 90% area) but underlain by the Neogene sedimentary rocks with currently active faults and forest soils with tephra layers, which tend to frequently produce slope failure such as landslide and bank collapse by rainfall or snowmelt. The water turbidity, T, in ppm was converted into suspended sediment concentration, SSC, in g/L by applying the linear relationship between T and SSC. The acquisition of the time series of discharge, Q (m3/s) and sediment load, L (=Q·SSC in g/s) of the river allowed us to distinguish the fluvial sediment transport, accompanied by slope failure in the upstream, from that under no slope failure. The SWAT was used to simulate soil erosion and identify the region prone to the soil erosion in the Oikamanai River basin. The model’s results showed a satisfactory agreement between daily observed and simulated sediment load as indicated by the high Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency. This evidences that the upper mountainous region of the catchment provides a main sediment source, accompanied by slope failure.