Received: 2 March 2018 Revised: 16 August 2019 Accepted: 6 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/rra.3544

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Sensitivity of river sediment transport and bridge

scour to effects of flow, temperature, and sea level

Brian D. Barkdoll | Jennie Tyrrell | Yang She | Jui Patankar

Department of Civil/Environmental
Engineering, Michigan Technological
University, Houghton, Michigan
Correspondence
Brian D. Barkdoll, Department of Civil/
Environmental Engineering, Michigan
Technological University, Houghton, MI
49931.
Email: barkdoll@mtu.edu
Abstract
Sediment transport has implications for activities such as fishing, flood control, scour
countermeasures, and dredging through altered flow depths and sediment transport,
bank erosion, and bridge scour. To estimate the changes in sediment transport and
bridge scour, river discharge, water surface slope, water temperature, and tailwater
depth (to simulate sea-level rise) were altered in existing sediment transport and
scour models. It was found that (a) in uniform flow upstream of sea-level rise effects,
sediment transport is sensitive to discharge but not to temperature; (b) in non-
uniform flow affected by sea-level rise, sediment transport is sensitive to water sur-
face slope and discharge but not to temperature; (3) the discharge value to restore
the sediment transport rate existing before sea-level rise is proportional to the water
surface slope ratio to the fourth power; (4) the discharge value to restore the bed sed-
iment size existing before sea-level rise is proportional to the water surface slope
ratio to the three-fourth power; (5) abutment scour is weakly inversely proportional
to the water surface slope but more strongly proportional to the discharge in a loga-
rithmic relation; (6) pier scour is weakly proportional to the water surface slope but
more strongly proportional to the discharge in a logarithmic relation; and (7) the dis-
charge to restore both abutment and pier scour depths to their original values prior to
sea-level rise is proportional to the water surface slope ratio to the 9/25th power. Full
equations for each of these relationships are given in the article. These relationships
can be used for future application and planning purposes.

KEYWORDS
erosion, flooding, open-channel hydraulics, weather

1 | INTRODUCTION
It has been postulated that temperature and sea levels will rise and
precipitation values fluctuate in the future due to the addition of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (Figure 1). Some regions are
postulated to have an increase in precipitation, while some may have
less (NASA, 2017). Thus, the flow depth, discharge, velocity, sediment
size, sediment transport rate, and bridge scour depth will fluctuate as
well (McGregor (2019). The river discharge and velocity may increase
or decrease, while water surface slope (friction slope) will decrease
(Figure 1). Water surface slope will decrease because if sea level rises,
then water surface slope must decrease since sea level is at the
downstream end of the river.
Sediment transport is a process in rivers in which flowing water
(Q) transports both bed and suspended sediment downstream (Qs). If
the flow velocity is above some critical value for movement, then bed
sediment will be transported downstream in some bed-form such as
ripples or dunes. If the water turbulence is high enough to suspend
sediment particles, then they will flow in suspension downstream.
Sediment transport is proportional to water velocity and water surface
slope, but inversely proportional to water temperature. Sediment
transport is proportional to velocity since a higher velocity transports

River Res Applic. 2019;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rra © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1
2 BARKDOLL ET AL.
sediment faster and has higher turbulence and, therefore, more sedi-
ment in suspension where it can flow faster than along the bed. A
steeper water surface slope also results in higher water velocity and
sediment transport. A higher temperature, however, results in less vis-
cous water, which cannot exert as much drag on the sediment and,
therefore, results in less sediment transport (Figure 1). The bed sedi-
ment size will increase with higher sediment transport rate since
smaller sediment particles will be washed downstream. This means
that the transition point between sand and gravel bed sediment sizes
will also migrate downstream (Figure 1), unless there is new sediment
input from the catchment.
Climate can affect hydrodynamic and sediment transport
regimes of rivers (Dibike, Shakibaeinia, Eum, Prowse, & Droppo,
2018; Lawler, McGregor, & Phillips, 2003; Nilawar & Waikar, 2019;
Shrestha, Maskey, Babel, van Griensven, & Uhlenbrook, 2018).
Classifying flow regimes at a continental scale can be useful for
examining discharge changes in various rivers of the world
(Archfield, Kennen, Carlisle, & Wolock, 2014; Piniewski, 2017). Cli-
mate and precipitation are already affecting many regions around
the world, including Africa (Leketa, Abiye, & Butler, 2019;
Mahmood & Jia, 2019; Nguvava, Abiodun, & Otieno, 2019), Chile
(Markovich, Dahlke, Arumí, Maxwell, & Fogg, 2019; Novoa et al.,
2019), China (Ma et al., 2019; Wang, Luo, & Shafeeque, 2019; Yang
et al., 2019; Zhang, Wang, Chen, Liang, & Liu, 2019), Europe
(O'Briain, 2019), India (Boral, Sen, Ghosal, Peucker-Ehrenbrink, &
Hemingway, 2019), Italy (Mallucci, Majone, & Bellin, 2019), Laos
(Whitehead et al., 2019), Lithuania (Edvardsson et al., 2019), the
Mediterranean region (Fonseca & Santos, 2019), New Guinea
(Aiello et al., 2019), Pakistan (Anjum, Ding, & Shangguan, 2019;
Saifullah et al., 2019), Poland (Piniewski, Laizé, Acreman,
Okruszko, & Schneider, 2014), Spain (García-Moreiras, Cartelle,
García-Gil, & Muñoz, 2019; Jiménez-Moreno et al., 2019), Tibet
(Li et al., 2019; Liu, Zhu, Huang, Hua, & Jia, 2019), Turkey (Yilmaz,
Sen, & Turuncoglu, 2019), and the United States (Aguilera,
Gershunov, & Benmarhnia, 2019; Akbariyeh et al., 2019; Foster
et al., 2019).
Bridge scour occurs when flowing water forms diving and swirling
flow patterns when encountering piers and abutments. These flow pat-
terns remove sediment from the bed. If the bed scours down below the
pier or abutment foundation, then bridge collapse may result
(Tipireddy & Barkdoll, 2019). Higher velocity results in deeper scour
due to an increased ability to dislodge and transport bed sediment. A
lower water surface slope results in slower velocity and increased tem-
perature results in less viscous water that will cause less scour, as men-
tioned above. The simultaneous occurrence of changing velocity, slope,
and temperature will therefore cause uncertain changes in sediment
transport and bridge scour (Khandel & Soliman, 2019).
For each river reach, sea-level rise will cause a decrease in sedi-
ment transport rate, an upstream movement of the gravel-sand
boundary, and decrease in bridge scour. Under this sea-level rise con-
dition, if discharge increases above a threshold level, then the sedi-
ment transport rate, gravel-sand boundary, and bridge scour will be
restored to their previous values. If discharge decreases, then there
will be an even greater decrease in sediment transport rate and bridge
scour and downstream migration of the sand-gravel boundary.
The purpose of this study is to estimate the sensitivity of sedi-
ment transport, sand-gravel boundary, and bridge scour to river dis-
charge, water surface slope, and water temperature through existing
models and to estimate the restoration discharge value that would be
the cutoff between whether or not river characteristics are increased
or decreased in order to guide river managers on flooding, stream res-
toration, and dredging budget allocations.
The following relationships are presented hereafter in the follow-
ing parts:
F I G U R E 1 Concept map of climate
change and river interaction
BARKDOLL ET AL.
1. Effect of discharge, Q, and temperature, T, on sediment transport
rate, Qs
2. Effect of discharge, Q, and water surface slope, S, in sea-level-rise
induced non-uniform flow conditions
3. Sediment transport restoration discharge value, Qstr, (discharge
needed to cause the same amount of sediment transport prior to
sea-level rise)
4. Sediment size restoration discharge value, Qbssr, (discharge needed
to cause the same sediment size prior to sea-level rise
5. Effect of discharge, Q, and water surface slope, S, on bridge abut-
ment scour, ds/L
6. Effect of discharge, Q, and water surface slope, S, on bridge pier
scour, ds/b
7. Bridge abutment and pier scour restoration discharge, Qasr and
Qpsr, (discharge needed to cause the same amount of scour prior to
sea-level rise)
2 | P R O C E D U R E AN D M E T H O D OL O G Y
2.1 | Sediment transport
2.1.1 | Part 1: Effect of discharge, Q, and
temperature, T, on sediment transport rate, Qs
To investigate the model prediction of the effect of changing weather
on sediment transport rate, the following method was employed:
using a commonly accepted sediment transport model, change the dis-
charge, Q, and the temperature, T, and find an equation that describes
the relationship of sediment transport and the change in Q and T. The
Shen and Hung (1972) sediment transport model (appendix
Equation (A1)) was chosen for its robustness. In preliminary research
(not shown here), the model results were centrally located among
other sediment transport model results. Since this equation gives sedi-
ment transport as a function of V, S, and ω, but not Q, as desired, it is
necessary to perform the sensitivity analysis for sediment transport as
a function of Q and not simply use the original equation. It is not pos-
sible to employ the first derivative test of the sediment transport func-
tion, since Q was not explicitly in the equation. A traditional and
simple model is chosen here for simplicity. The demonstration channel
had a mean particle size of 0.283 mm, a longitudinal bed slope of
0.00169, and a width of 21.64 m. Although having to choose values
for particle size, slope, and channel width may restrict these results to
rivers of this climatic region, hydrologic regime, and sediment type,
since all variables were non-dimensionalized, however, at least the
trends should be applicable to a wide range of real rivers. Velocity was
found from the continuity equation and fall velocity using Rubey's
(1933) method [appendix Equation (A2)]. Both velocity and fall veloc-
ity are needed for the subsequent calculation of sediment transport.
Flow depth, D, was determined based on the discharge, Q, using a
stage-discharge curve. Practitioners would not have to determine D to
use the equations being developed here. Kinematic viscosity values
were altered according to the temperature using a commonly-available
3
table of water properties (White, 1999, for example). For upstream
river reaches where the rising sea level did not affect the river dis-
charge and, therefore, the flow was uniform, various values of dis-
charge, Q, and water temperature, T, were input resulting in 100 trial
runs. For downstream reaches affected by the downstream sea level,
Q, T, and water surface slope, S, were all altered, resulting in 1,000
trials.
2.1.2 | Part 2: Effect of discharge, Q, and water
surface slope, S, in sea-level-rise induced non-uniform
flow conditions
Although the individual effect of each independent variable is reveal-
ing, in reality all variables, namely Q and T, might change simulta-
neously in uniform flow upstream of the reach affected by sea-level
rise. Therefore, the effect on Qs from Q and T for uniform flow was
found by a curve-fitting technique. The same was achieved for non-
uniform flow found in reaches just upstream of the sea outfall in
which Q, T, and S will change.
To demonstrate the effects on the sediment transport rate all
along a modelled river reach, the flow depth, sediment transport, and
migration of the sand-gravel transition point were monitored for
values of Q for a typical river reach of S = 0.00001, B = 1000 m, and
Qo = 9,400 m3/s. Again, although having to choose values for particle
size, slope, and channel width may restrict these results to rivers of
this climatic region, hydrologic regime, and sediment type, since all
variables were non-dimensionalized, however, at least the trends
should be applicable to a wide range of real rivers. This river reach
was modelled using continuity, Manning's Equation with n found by
Strickler (1923), Mavis and Lauschey (1948) for bed surface d50, Rubey
(1933) for fall velocity, and Shen and Hung (1972) for sediment
transport rate.
2.1.3 | Part 3: Sediment transport restoration
discharge value, Qstr, (discharge needed to cause the
same amount of sediment transport prior to sea-
level rise)
Additionally, as S decreases due to sea-level rise, there is less sediment
transport capacity and smaller bed sediment size. An increase of
Q could counterbalance that loss in transport capacity. Continuity,
Manning's, and the Shen and Hung Method were used to determine
this value, herein termed the Sediment Transport Restoration Dis-
charge, Qstr. In addition, the same equations were used to find the dis-
charge value that would restore the original bed sediment size and
sand-gravel transition point, herein termed the Bed Sediment Size
Restoration Discharge, Qbssr. Manning's and the Laursen (1963)
Method were used to find Qstr as follows:
From Equation (A1) if Y1 = Y2, then sediment transport rate will
not change. Using the definition of Y from Equation (1) as:
Y = (VS0.57/ω0.32)0.00750189, then
4 BARKDOLL ET AL.

0:00750189
0:00750189
Y = V 1 S1 0:57 =ω1 0:32 = V 2 S2 0:57 =ω2 0:32
in which the continuity equation V = Q/BD and Manning's equation

3=5
D = BSQn0:5 for a wide rectangular channel were substituted into
Equation (1).
2.1.4 | Part 4: Sediment size restoration discharge
value, Qbssr, (discharge needed to cause the same
sediment size prior to sea-level rise
In addition, Manning's and Mavis and Lauschey (1948) were used to find
the discharge value that would restore the original bed sediment size and
sand-gravel transition point (d50 = 2.0 mm), herein termed the Bed Sedi-
ment Size Restoration Discharge, Qbssr, as follows in Equation (2):
d50 α V 2 ; V 1 2 = V 2 2
where subscript 1 demotes prior to sea level rise and 2 denotes after
sea level rise.
2.2 | Bridge scour
2.2.1 | Part 5: Effect of discharge, Q, and water
surface slope, S, on bridge abutment scour, ds/L
To investigate model prediction of the effect of changing weather on
bridge scour, the following method was employed: using a commonly
accepted scour model (Melville & Coleman, 2000), change the flowrate,
Q, and the temperature, T, and find an equation that describes the rela-
tionship of scour and the changes in Q and T. To investigate the effect of
a change in discharge on bridge abutment scour depth, ds/L (where ds is
the scour depth and L is the abutment length), values resulting from the
Laursen (1963) model were calculated (appendix Equation (A3)). This
model was shown in preliminary research (not shown here) to plot cen-
trally among several abutment scour models and was, therefore, consid-
ered to be robust. Q values ranging from that of incipient motion to the
100-year flow value were employed. Incipient motion values for bedload
transport were used as the minimum Q value because there is no method
to determine incipient motion criteria for abutment scour. The 100-year
value was chosen as the maximum value due to its common use as an
extreme, high event for various applications, such as flood insurance.
Due to the lack of any temperature-affected terms in any of the
existing bridge scour models, the effect of water temperature change
on scour depth is unknown, although there is some evidence that
scour is not sensitive to water temperature change (Melville & Cheiw,
2000). Further study on this topic is, therefore, warranted. Rising
water temperature values will reduce the viscosity and density of
water. Assuming that the trend for sediment transport applies to scour
as well, less viscous and dense water interacting with a bridge pier or
abutment would seem to cause less scour, but negligibly so.
ð1Þ 2.2.2 | Part 6: Effect of discharge, Q, and water
surface slope, S, on bridge pier scour, ds/b
To investigate the effect of a change in discharge on bridge pier scour
depth, ds/b (where b is the pier width), values resulting from the Jain
and Fisher (1980) model were calculated (appendix Equation (A4)).
This model's results were shown in preliminary research (not shown
here) to be centrally located among several abutment scour models
and is, therefore, considered to be robust. Q values ranging from that
of incipient motion to the 100-year flow value were employed. Incipi-
ent motion values for bedload transport were used as the minimum
Q value because there is no method to determine incipient motion
criteria for pier scour.
2.2.3 | Part 7: Bridge abutment and pier scour
restoration discharge, Qasr and Qpsr, (discharge needed
ð2Þ to cause the same amount of scour prior to sea-
level rise)
Similarly, the value of discharge to restore abutment and pier scour
values were calculated using appendix Equation (A3) and the sim-
plified version of Jain and Fisher (1980) given by Melville and Col-
eman (2000) and is presented in appendix Equation (A3). Again,
Manning's Equation solved for D was substituted to find a value of
Qasr and Qpsr.
3 | RESULTS
3.1 | Sediment transport
3.1.1 | Part 1: Effect of discharge, Q, and
temperature, T, on sediment transport rate, Qs
Using the typical stage-discharge relationship and river values of
d50 = 0.283 mm and river width B = 21.6 m, the above procedure
yields a dependence of each variable as seen in Figure 2. It can be
seen that increasing Q or S yields significantly increasing Qs, while
increasing T yields a decrease in Qs, but to a lesser degree.
The curve-fitting equation relating Qs as a function of Q and T is
given in Equation (3), from which it can be seen that Q has a much
greater effect than T.
ln ðQs =Qsmax Þ = 0:1 + 2:217 lnðQ=Qmax Þ + 0:085½lnðT=T max Þ2 ð3Þ
3.1.2 | Part 2: Effect of discharge, Q, and water
surface slope, S, in sea-level-rise induced nonuniform
flow conditions
In addition, for nonuniform flow in which Q, S, and T change, the curve
fit in Equation (4) was obtained. Although T was included in the curve
BARKDOLL ET AL.
fitting for appendix Equation (A4), it was found to be negligible
and, therefore, was omitted. Three decimals were retained for
accuracy.
h i
Qs =Qsmax = 1= 0:22577=ðS=Smax Þ2 + 1:55476=ðQ=Qmax Þ
3.1.3 | Part 3: Sediment transport restoration
discharge value, Qstr, (discharge needed to cause the
same amount of sediment transport prior to sea-
level rise)
The value of the restoration discharge for sediment transport, Qstr,
was found in (Equation (5)):
Qstr = Qo ðS1 =S2 Þ4
F I G U R E 2 Effect of each variable Q, S, and T, altered individually,
on sediment transport rate
F I G U R E 3 Change in flow depth, D,
and sand-gravel transition point
(d50 = 2 mm) with distance in a typical
river reach
5
where, Q0 = the original Q before the sea-level rise, S1 = the friction slope
prior to sea-level rise, and S2 = the friction slope after sea-level rise.
This means, for example, that if S decreased from a value of 0.002
to 0.001, a 50% decrease, that Q would have to increase by 1600% to
ð4Þ restore the original sediment size.
3.1.4 | Part 4: Sediment size restoration discharge
value, Qbssr, (discharge needed to cause the same
sediment size prior to sea-level rise
The discharge value to restore the same bed sediment size, Qbssr, distribution
prior to lea level rise was also found in a similar way to be (Equation (6)):
Qbssr = Qo ðS1 =S2 Þ3=4 ð6Þ
ð5Þ
This means, for example, that if S decreased from a value of 0.002 to
0.001, a 50% decrease, that Q would have to increase by 137% to
restore the original sediment size.
Modelling of the entire river reach revealed that the flow depth
gets deeper going downstream and with higher Q as expected in this
M1 curve and that increasing Q values result in deeper flow depths
(Figure 3). Sediment transport, Qs (Figure 4), showed a decrease going
downstream and lower Q due to the decreasing velocity. In addition,
the d50 got finer going downstream and with higher discharge
(Figure 5). The sand-gravel boundary of d50 = 2 mm moved down-
stream from an x location of −646 m to −10 m for a flow increase of
0.78Qo (7,332 m3/s) to 1.22Qo (11,468 m3/s).
3.2 | Bridge scour
3.2.1 | Part 5: Effect of discharge, Q, and water
surface slope, S, on bridge abutment scour, ds/L
Existing models for both abutment and pier scour were studied to
determine implications for increased river discharge. Results show that
6 BARKDOLL ET AL.

F I G U R E 4 Change in sediment
transport rate, Qs, with distance in a
typical river reach

F I G U R E 5 Change in bed
sediment size, d50, with distance in a
typical river reach

higher river discharge, represented by changing Q, resulted in deeper seen that the ds/b values increase from 0.22 to 0.51 over the range of
ds/L values, where L is the abutment length, as expected, for abutment Q values tried, resulting in a 100×(0.51–0.22)/0.22 = 132% increase.
scour (Figure 6). Higher river discharge results in increased runoff, Similar to abutment scour, the pier scour Equation (8) yields ds/b
river flow, flow depth, and scour-inducing velocity. It can be seen that as a logarithmic function of both Q and S.
the ds/L values increase from 0.12 to 0.28 over the range of Q values      
ds S Q
used, resulting in a 100×(0.28–0.12)/0.12 = 133% increase. ln = 1:08540 + 0:08851ln + 0:17755 ln ð8Þ
b Smax Qmax
For nonuniform flow in the sea-level-rise-affected reach for abut-
ment scour Equation (7) yields (Several decimals were retained for
accuracy):
3.2.3 | Part 7: Bridge abutment and pier scour
     
ds S Q restoration discharge, Qasr and Qpsr, (discharge needed
ln = 1:14596− 0:149888 ln + 0:299264 ln ð7Þ
L Smax Qmax to cause the same amount of scour prior to sea-
level rise)

It can be shown that the discharge to restore the prior scour depth for
3.2.2 | Part 6: Effect of discharge, Q, and water both abutment and pier scour that Qpsr and Qasr, respectively, yield
surface slope, S, on bridge pier scour, ds/b Equation (9):

To investigate the effect of a change in discharge on bridge pier scour Qasr = Qpsr = Qo ðS1 =S2 Þ9=25 ð9Þ

depth, ds/b (where b is the pier diameter), values resulting from Jain
and Fisher (1980) for uniform flow show that higher river discharge,
Q, resulted in deeper ds/b values, as expected (Figure 7). Higher river
discharge results in flow depth and scour-inducing velocity. It can be
BARKDOLL ET AL. 7

F I G U R E 6 Normalized abutment scour

relationship using Laursen (1963) model for
uniform flow far upstream of the sea outfall

F I G U R E 7 Normalized pier sour using the Jain

and Fisher (1980) model for uniform flow far
upstream of the sea outfall

TABLE 1 Summary of all sensitivity relationships in the study

Part Independent variables Dependent variables Equation Equation number
1 Q, T Qs ln (Qs/Qsmax) = 0.1 + 2.217ln(Q/Qmax) + 0.085[ln(T/Tmax)]2 (3)
Description: In uniform flow upstream of sea-level rise effects, sediment transport sensitive to discharge but not to temperature.
2 Q, S, T Qs Qs/Qsmax = 1/[0.22577/(S/Smax)2 + 1.55476/(Q/Qmax)] (4)
T has negligible effect
Description: In non-uniform flow affected by sea-level rise, sediment transport is sensitive to water surface slope and discharge but not to
temperature.
3 Qstr S1, S2 Qstr = Qo(S1/S2)4 (5)
Description: The discharge value to restore the sediment transport rate existing before sea-level rise is proportional to the water surface slope ratio to
the fourth power.
4 Qbssr S1, S2 Qbssr = Qo(S1/S2)3/4 (6)
Description: The discharge value to restore the bed sediment size existing before sea-level rise is proportional to the water surface slope ratio to the
three-fourth power.


 
5 ds/L S, Q ln dLs = 1:14596 − 0:149888 ln SmaxS
+ 0:299264 ln QQmax (7)
Description: Abutment scour is inversely proportional to the water surface slope but proportional

tothe discharge
in a logarithmic
 relation.
 
6 ds/b S, Q ln dbs = 1:08540 + 0:08851ln Smax
S
+ 0:17755 ln QQmax (8)
Description: Pier scour is weakly proportional to the water surface slope but more strongly proportional to the discharge in a logarithmic relation.
7 Qasr, Qpsr S1, S2 Qasr = Qpsr = Qo(S1/S2)9/25 (9)
Description: The discharge to restore both abutment and pier scour depths to their original values prior to sea-level rise is proportional to the water
surface slope ratio to the 9/25th power.
8 BARKDOLL ET AL.

4 | D IS C U S S I O N 5 | S UM M AR Y AN D C O NC L U SI O N S

Alternatively, field data could have been used instead of models Sensitivity analysis of sediment transport and bridge scour depth to
and predictions made about the future based on the past. This may discharge temperature, water surface slope, and sea-level rise using
not be accurate, however, since weather patterns may be existing models was performed here. The results of all the sensitivity
changing. studies performed are summarized in Table 1. In addition, the effect of
The models chosen here are classic, although not perfect. It is not temperature change on bridge scour is unknown and needs further
clear that more recent models are any more accurate than the ones research. These relationships can help river managers plan for the
used here, necessarily. Recently, numerical models have been devel- future.
oped for sediment transport (Papanicolaou, Elhakeem, Krallis, &
Prakash, 2008). ACKN OWL ED GEME NT S
Although having to choose values for particle size, slope, and Thanks to Meng Gao who helped on preliminary work.
channel width may restrict these results to rivers of this climatic
region, hydrologic regime, and sediment type., since all variables DA TA AV AIL ABIL I TY STA TEM EN T
were non-dimensionalized, however, the trends should be applica- Data available on request from the authors.
ble to a wide range of real rivers. Commonly used sediment trans-
port and bridge scour models relevant to many rivers were used. NO TAT I ON
The results, therefore, should be applicable to a wide variety of a pier width
rivers. B river width
The migration of the sand-gravel boundary may affect fish behav- Ct total sediment concentration with wash load
iour since larger sediment may be more suitable for some fish species D water flow depth
to lay their eggs, as long as the fish eggs themselves are not winnowed d50 mean sediment size
out of the gravel layer they were laid in. Micro- and macro- ds depth of scour
invertebrates can also be washed away (Wood & Petts, 1994), thus Fr Froude number
affecting fish behaviour. This increased amount of transported sedi- Frc critical Froude number for incipient sediment motion
ment, however, could settle downstream and smother fish eggs there. L abutment length
Increased flow in rivers could increase flooding, resulting in the need n Manning's roughness value
for more flood control, such as upstream diversion or higher levee or Q discharge
dam heights. In addition, more dredging may be required downstream Qo discharge prior to sea-level rise
to ensure sufficient boat draft depths for navigation where the addi- Q100 100-year discharge
tional transported sediment may be deposited. Bridges could scour Qasr discharge to restore abutment scour depth
more, thereby resulting in the need for more scour countermeasures Qpsr discharge to restore pier scour depth
at existing bridges and deeper foundation depths for new bridges. In Qbssr bed sediment size restoration discharge
the absence of these additional measures, bridge collapse may occur, Qmax maximum discharge studied
thereby resulting in additional loss of life, increased travel times due Qs sediment transport rate
to necessary traffic detours, and increased budgets for bridge replace- Qsmax maximum sediment transport rate studied
ment. If less scour occurs, then fish may have less room to hide from Qs100 sediment transport rate for 100-year flow
bird predators, since holes provide hiding places for fish (Barkdoll & Qstr sediment transport restoration discharge
Huckins, 2012). In addition, if the gravel-sand boundary migrates, then Qssr sediment size restoration discharge
any bridge scour could increase if a smaller size sediment was present Qasr abutment scour depth restoration discharge
in the scour hole and, conversely, bridge scour could decrease if a Qpsr pier scour depth restoration discharge
larger size sediment was present in the scour hole. Environmental S friction slope
affects and flows can also be affected (Yin, Petts, & Yang, 2015; Yin, S1 friction slope before sea-level rise
Yang, & Petts, 2012). S2 friction slope after sea-level rise
This analysis covers sediment transport, sand-to-gravel transition, Smax maximum friction slope studied
pier scour, and sea-level rise. Considering the sea-level rise affects T water temperature
means that this phenomenon occurs at an estuary, which would incor- Tmax maximum water temperature studied
porate tide and waves. Future work should include these effects into V water cross-sectionally averaged velocity
the analysis. As it stands now, this analysis is for mean sea level rise but υ kinematic viscosity of water
would need to be altered for low- and high-tide conditions. γs specific weight of sediment
γ specific weight of water
ω sediment fall velocity.
BARKDOLL ET AL.
OR CI D
Brian D. Barkdoll https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4552-425X
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SU P P ORT IN G I N F OR MA T I ON
Additional supporting information may be found online in the
Supporting Information section at the end of this article.
How to cite this article: Barkdoll BD, Tyrrell J, She Y,
Patankar J. Sensitivity of river sediment transport and bridge
scour to effects of flow, temperature, and sea level. River Res
Applic. 2019;1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3544