Surrogate techniques for river sediment transport monitoring (IAHR_3_S2)

Topic

Sediment transport measurement is essential for understanding river morphology, environmental/ecological/economical assessment, and flood hazard mapping. The conventional techniques are limited in spatio-temporal resolution, are labour-intensive, sometimes even not feasible to employ, and disturb the measured process. Consequently, sediment transport data for rivers, especially for bedload transport, are generally rare and scattered.
The aim of the proposed session is to present and discuss the most recent results and experiences achieved by advanced surrogate techniques, such as optical, acoustic or imaging methods.
Even though surrogate techniques have increasingly been developed in the last decades, many scientific questions are still to be addressed. For instance, we need to understand better the effect of mixed nature and size particles on acoustic backscatter when employing ADCPs for suspended- and bedload interpretations. Also, when using multibeam techniques to assess bedload transport based on bedform tracking, the bedform disequilibrium makes challenging their analysis. Image based techniques (e.g. PTV or PIV), to understand better gravel transport, also show great potential, however, their applicability needs to be further tested and discussed.
The special session invites contributions that address advanced and novel aspects of measuring fluvial sediment transport using surrogate techniques (e.g., acoustic, optical, imaging). Invited contributions may cover a variety of topics ranging from field and laboratory studies towards the understanding of fundamental processes, the validation of surrogate methods and the assessment of novel devices performance.