What is it about?
As it is known, vegetation is an important component of aquatic ecosystems. Because of the variety of species and, thus, of the characteristics of the vegetation elements (form, size, stiffness, ..), it is difficult to develop a widely applicable method to predict mean flow and flow resistance. Despite the intense activity research, much work has to be done in understanding hydrodynamics in vegetated channels. This is important to analyze many physical processes involving in the ecosystem at different spatial and time scales. In this paper, attention is restricted to flexible vegetation.
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Why is it important?
In the present paper, with the aid of experimental data, an attempt is made to give a contribution on answering to the aforementioned open-questions. In particular the present work aims: 1) to analyze how flow submergence and stems concentration affect the flow velocity profile and the momentum exchange between the layers inside and above the vegetation; 2) to identify how the aforementioned parameters affect the mean flow and the conveyance characteristics of flow. On the basis of the observed results a sort of classification useful to explore the representations of interactions vegetation-flow has been indicated. This could be useful in the context of a wider view of the parameterization in estimating the mean flow and flow conveyance.
Perspectives
The results have shown a peculiar vegetation behavior for low flow submergence and high stems concentration. In particular, the present results highlight the existence of two different regions of flow motion: within the range 1<h/kv<2 (i.e. in the “depth-limited submerged vegetation”) where the parameter h/kv does not exert an important role on Vm/v*; for h/kv>2 (i.e. in the “submerged vegetation”) where the vertical momentum transport becomes important and this increases as the flow depth increases. Further research has to be done in order to evaluate the vegetation behavior with variable flow submergence.
Dr Donatella Termini
Universita degli Studi di Palermo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Flexible vegetation behaviour and effects on flow conveyance: experimental observations, International Journal of River Basin Management, March 2015, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/15715124.2015.1012519.
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