Soil and Crop Damages as a Result of Levee Breaches on Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

Whenever levees on the Ohio or Mississippi rivers are breached, there are soil damages in the flooded areas that impact agricultural management capacities and crop productivity. Floodwaters coat the entire flooded land surface with sediments which include a variety of pollutants, nutrients and contaminants. The nature of the sediments in floodwaters varies with the topographical and land use characteristics of the watershed. The soil types, hydro-geologic features, volume of flow, time of year, agricultural use of fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals as well as upstream point sources such as sewage treatment plants, storm sewer drainage and other urban land uses will affect the extent of the contamination and fine scale remediation needed. Preliminary characterization and measurement of soils and sediment deposit at three locations that experienced recent natural and man induced levee breaches are analyzed to identify patterns of soil and crop damage. These findings provide guidance to the restoration of craters, gullies, land scoured areas and contaminated sediment depositional sites with a goal to improve decision-making, risk analysis and remedial effectiveness. Recommendations include： （1） improve characterization and measurement of eroded soils and distribution of sediment contaminants after levee breaching; （2） assess contamination effects on soil productivity and long term agricultural production in order to understand the impacts of flooding on agricultural soils; （3） evaluate reconstruction investments needed to repair levees based on return of the land to productivity and increased landscape resilience by reducing vulnerability to future flooding and levee breaching stress.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF LEVEE BREACH FLOWS UNDER COMPLEX BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Levee or dam failure can cause a significant disaster in most cases. A good prediction of the flood process especially in a real complex terrain is necessary for working out emergency plans for levee or dam breaches. Numerical simulations of levee or dam breach flow were carried out often with constant flow parameters and in relatively simple channels rather than in natural rivers with complex boundaries. This article presents our dedicated studies on the 2-D numerical model of levee or dam breach hydraulics with finite difference schemes. The good performance of the model is demonstrated by comparisons with the theoretical solution of an idealized dam-break flow over a frictionless flat rectangular channel. The model is also validated through its stability and conservation properties. The model is applied to simulate the flood propagation under complex boundary conditions, and the unsteady flood process in a river and in the dry floodplain with a complex bed terrain simultaneously. Furthermore, with respect to engineering practice, the numerical solutions can give special guidance to the effects of parameters such as the flood depth at different sites and the inundated area at different time periods after the levee breach and the travel time of the flood waves, which may be very important for practicing engineers in an efficient flood management.