Modeling of River Width Variations Based on Hydrological, Morphological, and Biological Dynamics

What is it about?

The work confirms the opportunity to deal with hydro-morpho-biodynamic river modeling at large spatial and temporal scale through an efficient mixed 1D + quasi-2D approach. On the one side, the 1D simplified sub-model permits reasonably fast computations at watershed scale (even of continental-size rivers) extended to the required long period of time (up to several centuries and millennia) of the river longitudinal evolution (bottom slope and grain-size composition). On the other side, also based on the “local” and “instantaneous” results of the 1D sub-model, the quasi-2D sub-model provides the transversal representation of the watercourse in terms of active (non-vegetated) width and vegetation density, which in its turn reflects on the 1D computations.

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Why is it important?

Apart from the necessity to test the model under different climatic and geomorphological conditions and apart from the possible improvements of its present structure, the authors are convinced that the basic concepts utilized in this approach have a general validity. Among them, in particular, i) the combination of two extremely different time-scales for the longitudinal and the transversal sub-models, and ii) the adoption of a productory to express the aggregate carrying capacity of the riparian vegetation.