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Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Erosion and Sediment Transport".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2020) | Viewed by 41415

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Roger Falconer

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Hydro-Environmental Research Centre, School of Engineering, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK
Interests: computational hydro-environmental modelling; laboratory hydraulic modelling; hydrodynamic processes; water quality; sediment transport and morphology; faecal indicator organisms; contaminant fate and transport; coastal, estuarine and river restoration; flood risk assessment; quantitative health risk assessment; global water security

Prof. Dr. Reza Ahmadian

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Guest Editor

School of Engineering, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK
Interests: hydro-environmental modelling; flood risk management; extreme flood modeling; evacuation planning; nature-based solutions; digital twins; pollution modeling
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Prof. Binliang Lin

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Guest Editor

Department of Hydraulic Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100086, China
Interests: computational hydro-environmental modelling; laboratory hydraulic modelling; river flow and sediment transport processes; impacts of large dams on water tempreture; contaminant fate and transport; coastal and estuarine dynamics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past few decades, there has been increasing concern about global water security, particularly with regard to flow and water quality processes in rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters. The impact of climate change has led to a higher number of floods and droughts, and population growth and urbanisation have led to growing demand for water, food, and energy, leading to increasing diffuse and point source pollution. Increasing global wealth has also led to changes in food habits and demand for commodities, leading to a rise in virtual water demand and, as a consequence, increasing pollution and more challenging hydro-ecosystems management. To address these challenges, together with the importance of complying with ever-growing regulatory standards (such as the EU Bathing Water Directive), an improved understanding of hydrodynamics, water quality (including contaminents of emerging concern), sediment transport, and morphological processes is required together with improved predictive models, associated with new numerical schemes, increasing field data, large-scale laboratory data, higher-performance computing facilities and improved bathymetric data and visual representation, etc. This Special Issue aims to bring together recent pure and applied research on a wide range of topics related to flow and water quality processes in modelling river and coastal basin systems from catchments to the coast. We encourage submissions on: Hydrodynamic processes (including: Roughness, turbulence, data acquisition and analysis, boundary conditions, etc.), particularly for extreme events; water quality processes (including: Diffusion and dispersion, dynamic decay, bed and surface interactions, constituent interactions (such as nutrients), field data and analysis, etc.); sediment transport and morphological processes (including: Cohesive and noncohesive sediments, adsorption and desorption water quality constituents (such as faecal indicator organisms—FIOs) and trace metals, flux of water quality indicators in the oxic and anoxic sediment layers, and transport of FIOs via the sediments; rapid sediment flux reduction and water temperature changes (due to building large dams and conservation), etc. We especially welcome submissions that explore the extension of these processes to predict health risk assessments, such as gastroentiritis, for the river, estuarine, and coastal water columns.

Prof. Roger Falconer
Dr. Reza Ahmadian
Prof. Binliang Lin
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Computational fluid dynamics
Coastal, estuarine, and river dynamics
Laboratory modelling and experimental studies
Hydrodynamic processes
Water quality processes
Sediment transport and morphology
Contaminant fate and transport
Field data and analysis
Data-driven modelling
Health risk assessment

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Published Papers (10 papers)

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35 pages, 26216 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mechanism of Formation and Estuarine Turbidity Maxima in the Hau River Mouth

by Nguyen Ngoc Tien, Dinh Van Uu, Do Huy Cuong, Le Dinh Mau, Nguyen Xuan Tung and Pham Duc Hung

Water 2020, 12(9), 2547; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092547 - 12 Sep 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4043

Abstract

Observation of the Hau River distributary of the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, conducted in dry and flood season (2009, 2014, and 2015), is utilized to investigate the mechanism of formation, distribution of estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM), and links with sediment transport in the system. Additionally, 3D (three-dimensional) numerical models are applied to simulate the seasonal tidal variation (flood and dry seasons) of the water and suspended sediment transport processes of the Mekong River Delta. The 3D model, with a combination of hydrodynamic-wave and suspended sediment transport, was set up and validated with measured data in the study area. The mechanism that measures ETM is the process of suspended sediment from the river when it interacts with seawater and speeds up the flocculation, combined with the asymmetry of the tidal current, which will create the region with ETM by moving in/out with the tidal current’s ups and downs. As there is surface flow velocity towards the sea, the bottom baroclinic flow has a decisive role in deposition and erosion, and it causes the suspended sediment concentration (SSC) to be maximized. During the flood season, the salt wedge near the river’s mouth, at the peak of the tide, pushes towards the sea’s direction when there are ebbing tides, with a scope of about 20 km. In the dry season, there is estuary disturbance as well; the salt wedge forms, but is relatively weak or does not exist, depending on the time of the tide. The maximum turbidity zone in the flood season moves the subaqueous delta with a scope of about 20 km and SSC of about 0.1 to 0.6 g L⁻¹, whereas in the dry season, the seawater has high salinity, and seaward SSC penetrates the estuaries to cause a disturbance and flocculation. The penetration scope is up to 50 km and creates a water mass that has high SSC, from 0.2 to 0.7 g L⁻¹, to run in/off by the tidal current’s ups and downs for several kilometers in the tidal phase. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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18 pages, 12051 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Studying the Wake of an Island in a Macro-Tidal Estuary

by Bin Guo, Reza Ahmadian, Paul Evans and Roger A. Falconer

Water 2020, 12(5), 1225; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12051225 - 25 Apr 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3589

Abstract

Tidal flow can generate unsteady wakes, large eddies, and recirculation zones in the lee or around complex natural and artificial obstructions, such as islands, headlands, or harbours. It is essential to understand the flow patterns around such structures given the potential impacts they can have on sedimentation, the marine environment, ecology, and anthropogenic activities. In this paper, the wake around an island in a macro-tidal environment has been studied using a widely used hydro-environmental model, Telemac-2D. Current data collected using moored acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) were used to validate and refine the Telemac-2D model. Four different turbulence models and several different solver options for the k-

ε

model were tested in this study to assess which representation could best replicate the hydrodynamics. The classic k-

ε

model with the solver of conjugate residual was the most suitable method to simulate the wake in the lee of the island. The model results showed good correlation with measured data. The island wake parameter used to predict the wake behaviour and its predictions matched the model results for different tidal conditions, suggesting that the island wake parameter could be used to predict the wake behind obstacles in macro-tidal environments. The model predictions showed the development of a wake is similar between ebb and flood tides in the neap tide while showing more difference in spring tide. With the increase of velocity in the neap tide, two side-by-side vortices will appear and then changing to stable Karman Vortex Street. During the ebb phase of spring tide, the wake will develop from a stable vortex to an unstable Karman Vortex Street, while the wake remained stable with two vortices during an flood tide. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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20 pages, 4211 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Investigation of Morphological Changes in the Tamsui River Estuary Using an Integrated Coastal and Estuarine Processes Model

by Tung-Chou Hsieh, Yan Ding, Keh-Chia Yeh and Ren-Kai Jhong

Water 2020, 12(4), 1084; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12041084 - 10 Apr 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4361

Abstract

This study is to investigate morphological changes in the Tamsui River Estuary in Taiwan driven by multiple physical processes, such as river flows, tides, waves, and storm surges, and then to study the impacts of sediment flushing operated at the Shihmen reservoir upstream on the river estuary. An integrated coastal and estuarine processes model (CCHE2D-Coast) (Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering Two-Dimensional-Coast) was validated by simulating these physical processes in the estuary driven by three historical typhoons in 2008. The site-specifically validated model was then applied to simulate morphological changes in the estuary in response to reservoir sediment flush scenarios from the upstream. For the impact assessment of sediment flushing, a synthetic hydrological event was designed by including a historical typhoon and a typical monsoon. It was found that during the typhoon, the sediments will be mostly deposited in the estuarine river reach of Tamsui and the Wazihwei sandy beach. During the monsoon period, most of the sediments tend to be deposited in the second fishing port of Tamsui, the northern breakwater, and the estuary, while the Wazihwei sandy beach in the river mouth would be scoured by backflow. Simulations of the complex flow fields and morphological changes will facilitate the best practice of sediment management in the coastal and estuarine regions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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28 pages, 28020 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

IberWQ: A GPU Accelerated Tool for 2D Water Quality Modeling in Rivers and Estuaries

by Orlando García-Feal, Luis Cea, José González-Cao, José Manuel Domínguez and Moncho Gómez-Gesteira

Water 2020, 12(2), 413; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12020413 - 4 Feb 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4340

Abstract

Numerical models are useful tools to analyze water quality by computing the concentration of physical, chemical and biological parameters. The present work introduces a two-dimensional depth-averaged model that computes the most relevant and frequent parameters used to evaluate water quality. High performance computing (HPC) techniques based on graphic processing unit (GPU) parallelization have been applied to improve the efficiency of the package, providing speed-ups of two orders of magnitude in a standard PC. Several test cases were analyzed to show the capabilities and efficiency of the model to evaluate the environmental status of rivers and non-stratified estuaries. IberWQ will be freely available through the package Iber. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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17 pages, 4269 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparative Analysis of Four Baseflow Separation Methods in the South Atlantic-Gulf Region of the U.S.

by Hao Chen and Ramesh S. V. Teegavarapu

Water 2020, 12(1), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12010120 - 30 Dec 2019

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4553

Abstract

Baseflow estimation and evaluation are two critical and essential tasks for water quality and quantity, drought management, water supply, and groundwater protection. Observed baseflows are rarely available and are limited to focused pilot studies. In this study, an exhaustive evaluation of four different baseflow separation methods (HYSEP, WHAT, BFLOW, and PART) using surrogates of observed baseflows estimated with the conductivity mass balance (CMB) method is carried out using data from several streamflow gauging sites from the South Atlantic-Gulf (SAG) region comprised of nine states in the Southeastern U.S. Daily discharge data from 75 streamflow gauging sites for the period 1970–2013, located in the least anthropogenically affected basins in the SAG region were used to estimate the baseflow index (BFI), which quantifies the contribution of baseflow from streamflows. The focus of this study is to compare the four different baseflow separation methods and calibrate and validate these methods using CMB method based estimates of baseflows to evaluate the variation of BFI values derived from these methods. Results from the study suggest that the PART and HYSEP methods provide the highest and lowest average BFI values of 0.62 and 0.52, respectively. Similarities in BFI values estimated from these methods are noted based on a strong correlation between WHAT and BFLOW. The highest BFI values were found in April in the eastern, western, and central parts of the SAG region, and the highest contribution of baseflow to the streamflow was noted in October in the southern region. However, the lowest BFI values were noted in the month of September in all regions of SAG. The calibrated WHAT method using data from the CMB method provides the highest correlation as noted by the coefficient of determination. This study documents an exhaustive and comprehensive evaluation of baseflow separation methods in the SAG region, and results from this work can aid in the selection of the best method based on different metrics reported in this study. The use of the best method can aid in the short and long term management of low flows at a regional level that supports a sustainable aquatic environment and mitigates the effects of droughts effectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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19 pages, 4634 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Numerical Simulation Study on Salt Release Across the Sediment–Water Interface at Low-Permeability Area

by Weijian Li, Jinguo Wang, Zhou Chen, Yun Yang, Ruitong Liu, Yue Zhuo and Dong Yang

Water 2019, 11(12), 2503; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11122503 - 27 Nov 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3564

Abstract

Salt release from dredger filling sediment is a significant threat to freshwater resources in coastal regions around the world. This study focuses on the estimation of the field-scale salt-release process from the low-permeability sediment–water interface under different hydrological and hydrodynamic conditions. In situ sampling tests and physical experiments were implemented to calculate hydrogeological parameters and monitor sediment and water salinity. Numerical modeling was used to calibrate the molecular diffusion coefficient, of which the correlation coefficient was over 0.9, and explore the salt-release process across the sediment–water interface in Yuehu Lake, China. Furthermore, we discuss the influence of hydrologic conditions in terms of the lake stage and hydrodynamic conditions with water-exchange on the process of salt exchange between the sediment and water based on numerical simulations. Our findings showed that water-exchange accelerated the process of salt release from the sediment and maintained a relatively low salinity in the surface water. The salt-release rate decreased gradually as the concentration gradient between the water and sediment decreased. A frequency of water-exchange of 90 d maintained a rapid salt-release rate with fewer water-exchange steps. The influence of the lake stage was weak on the salt-release process at low-permeability area and salt release was not impeded before the salt capacity of water reached the maximum value. When the water–sediment salinity reached equilibrium, the salt-release process between the water and sediment equilibrated as the supply from the lower layers equaled the release to the water at the interface. These results are important in regard to controlling surface water salinization in coastal reclamation areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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25 pages, 8975 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effects of Climate Change and Flow Regulation on the Flow Characteristics of a Low-Relief River within Southern Boreal Climate Area

by Elina Kasvi, Eliisa Lotsari, Miia Kumpumäki, Tanja Dubrovin and Noora Veijalainen

Water 2019, 11(9), 1827; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091827 - 2 Sep 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4018

Abstract

We investigated how hydro-climatological changes would affect fluvial forces and inundated area during a typical high-flow situation (MHQ, mean high discharge), and how adaptive regulation could attenuate the climate change impacts in a low-relief river of the Southern Boreal climate area. We used hydrologically modeled data as input for 2D hydraulic modeling. Our results show that, even though the MHQ will increase in the future (2050–2079), the erosional power of the flow will decrease on the study area. This can be attributed to the change of timing in floods from spring to autumn and winter, when the sea levels during flood peaks is higher, causing backwater effect. Even though the mean depth will not increase notably (from 1.14 m to 1.25 m) during MHQ, compared to the control period (1985–2014), the inundated area will expand by 15% due to the flat terrain. The increase in flooding may be restrained by adaptive regulations: strategies favoring ecologically sustainable and recreationally desirable lake water levels were modeled. The demands of environment, society, and hydropower are not necessarily contradictory in terms of climate change adaptation, and regulation could provide an adaptive practice in the areas of increased flooding. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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17 pages, 5892 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Combined Effect of Tides and Wind on Water Exchange in a Semi-Enclosed Shallow Sea

by Jiancheng Shang, Jian Sun, Lei Tao, Yuanyi Li, Zhenhua Nie, Haiying Liu, Rui Chen and Dekui Yuan

Water 2019, 11(9), 1762; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091762 - 23 Aug 2019

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 4199

Abstract

The Bohai Sea is a semi-enclosed shallow sea in China, where the tides and wind are the dominant factors contributing to the water exchange with the Yellow Sea. However, existing studies on this water exchange primarily consider only the effect of tidal action, neglecting the contribution of wind. In this study, numerical models were used to simulate the hydrodynamic processes and tracer transport, with the consideration of both tides and wind. Based on the models, the two time scales, age and half-life, are applied to study the water exchange in the Bohai Sea quantitatively. The results show that the age and half-life decrease significantly when wind is included in the simulation, revealing that wind is an important contributor to the water exchange in such a semi-enclosed shallow sea. Under the combined forcing of tides and wind, the water transport in the Bohai Sea becomes clockwise, in contrast with the counterclockwise transport driven by the tides only. The seasonal-varying wind leads to a fluctuation of water exchange in an annual cycle, with the stronger water exchange in the northern (Liaodong Bay) and the western (Bohai Bay) regions of the Bohai Sea in winter and in the southern part (Laizhou Bay) in summer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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17 pages, 18950 KiB

Open AccessArticle

MR-WC-MPS: A Multi-Resolution WC-MPS Method for Simulation of Free-Surface Flows

by Mohammad Amin Nabian and Leila Farhadi

Water 2019, 11(7), 1349; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071349 - 29 Jun 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4595

Abstract

A Multi-Resolution Weakly Compressible Moving-Particle Semi-Implicit (MR-WC-MPS) method is presented in this paper for simulation of free-surface flows. To reduce the computational costs, as with the multi-grid schemes used in mesh-based methods, there is also a need in particle methods to efficiently capture the characteristics of different flow regions with different levels of complexity in different spatial resolutions. The proposed MR-WC-MPS method allows the use of particles with different sizes in a computational domain, analogous to multi-resolution grid in grid-based methods. To evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method, it is applied to the dam-break and submarine landslide tests. It is shown that the MR-WC-MPS results, while about 15% faster, are in good agreement with the conventional single-resolution MPS results and experimental results. The remarkable ability of the MR-WC-MPS method in providing robust savings in computational time for up to 60% is then shown by applying the method for simulation of extended submarine landslide test. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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8 pages, 2765 KiB

Open AccessTechnical Note

To Implement A Clear-Water Supply System for Fine-Sediment Experiment in Laboratories

by Qiang Yuan, Man Zhang and Jianjun Zhou

Water 2019, 11(12), 2476; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11122476 - 24 Nov 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2984

Abstract

Fine sediment transport is currently attracting increasing attentions owing to its importance in the dynamics of sediment-contaminant interaction in the fluvial environment downstream of dams, which calls for more detailed and accurate flume experiments. However, because of inaccurate loading and undesired recirculation of fine sediment in the usual short laboratory flumes, such experiments are often unrepeatable and unreliable. In this technical note, we propose a new sediment feeder, to load dry sediment sample at the inlet, and a pressurized sediment filter, to screen the sediment out at the outlet, to implement a clear-water supply system for the flumes. It can improve fine sediment experiments not only by accurate loading but also through preventing undesired sediment recirculation, which can interfere and even modify the designated upstream input conditions. These devices have been constructed and tested, shown to be practical, simple and effective. Using them together can also provide a way to reclaim all the samples of experimental sediment that are of crucial importance for repeat and multiple tests for different contamination with a given sediment without losing the prescribed composition and other properties. This implementation is especially suitable for simulating fine particle affinity contaminant transport in fluvial turbulent flows in low sediment concentrations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters)

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