Biomass selection by floods and related timescales: Part 1. Experimental observations

P. Perona*, P. Molnar, B. Crouzy, E. Perucca, Z. Jiang, S. McLelland, D. Wüthrich, K. Edmaier, R. Francis, More Authors

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

73 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Several research investigations have explored the interaction between morphodynamic and vegetation growth processes from both the modelling and the experimental viewpoints. Results have mainly been concerned with morphologic analyses of the effects of vegetation on long term riverbed evolution without addressing the relative role of the timescales between such processes. This paper presents for the first time the statistics of uprooted biomass obtained while perturbing the vegetation growing in the river bed with periodic disturbances of constant magnitude. That is, we force the biological and hydrological processes to interact and study the related timescales in order to shed light on the role of flood disturbances in selecting the component of the biomass that has a higher chance of survival in relation to its growth stage. A simple interpretative stochastic model is then presented and thoroughly discussed in a companion paper (Biomass selection by floods and related timescales: Part 2. Stochastic modelling).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)85-96
Number of pages12
JournalAdvances in Water Resources
Volume39
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Biomass selection
  • Flow-vegetation interaction
  • Fluvial ecomorphology
  • Laboratory experiment
  • Riparian vegetation
  • Vegetation roots

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