24This laboratory study describes the sediment patterns formed in a sand bed 25 around circular patches of rigid vertical cylinders, representing a patch of reedy 26 emergent vegetation. The patch diameter was much smaller than the channel 27 width. Two patch densities (solid volume fraction 3% and 10%) and two patch 28diameters (

Wood reintroduction is now considered an important aspect of stream restoration, due to ecohydraulic benefits associated with wood presence. Channel‐spanning wood jams create an upstream backwater, increasing flow heterogeneity, sediment deposition, and ecological productivity, but also flood risk. Backwater rise prediction is necessary to evaluate flood hazards in hydraulic models, improve design of engineered logjam projects, and compare jam effects across river systems. We present experimental results demonstrating that a jam can be modeled as a porous obstruction generating momentum loss proportional to the number, size, and packing density of the logs and the jam length. Energy and momentumconstraints are combined to predict backwater rise from unit discharge and a dimensionless structural parameter. This novel approach allows description of preexisting jams with a common metric. The model was used to demonstrate how backwater length, pool size, and upstream sediment deposition depend on jam structure and channel slope.

Seagrass meadows, which mediate ocean acidity and turbidity, sequester carbon, and increase biodiversity by providing shelter for larvae and small fish, are among the fastest disappearing ecosystems worldwide. Seagrasses are ecosystem engineers, creating distinct regions of enhanced and diminished flow and turbulent mixing, dependent upon canopy physical parameters, such as canopy density and blade morphology, which in turn impact the transport of pollen, sediment, and nutrients. The health and resilience of seagrass meadows increase with intraspecies genetic diversity, which depends on successful sexual reproduction and the transport of pollen particles between reproductive shoots, which in turn depends on the hydrodynamic conditions created by the meadow. This paper explored the transport of pollen grains in seagrass meadows using a random walk model. The model was parameterized with profiles of mean velocity and eddy diffusivity derived as functions of shoot density, canopy height, canopy shear velocity, canopy drag coefficient, and blade width, and validated with experimental measurements of a tracer plume evolving in a submerged model canopy. Model results showed that release at the top of the canopy led to significantly greater dispersal than release within the canopy, which was consistent with observed patterns of genetic diversity in Zostera marina seeds collected from coastal Massachusetts meadows. Specifically, seeds produced from upper inflorescences had greater allelic richness than seeds from lower inflorescences on the same reproductive shoot, and were the product of a greater number of fathers, reflecting the greater in-canopy pollen movement farther from the bed. Pollen grains modeled with a realistic elongated shape experienced significantly higher rates of capture by the canopy relative to spherical grains of the same volume. The effect of submergence depth (the ratio of water depth to canopy height) on pollen dispersal depended on the nature of the surface boundary: when Follett et al. Hydrodynamics Influence Eelgrass Allelic Richness pollen reflected off the water surface, the mean travel distance before pollen capture decreased with decreasing submergence depth. In contrast, when pollen accumulated at the water surface, surface transport increased pollen dispersal distances, especially at low submergence depths.

Numerical evaluation of tree canopy shape near noise barriers to improve downwind shielding J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123, 648 (2008); 10.1121/1.2828052 This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitation. Flexible terrestrial and aquatic plants bend in response to fluid motion and this reconfiguration mechanism reduces drag forces, which protects against uprooting or breaking under high winds and currents. The impact of reconfiguration on the flow can be described quantitatively by introducing a drag coefficient that decreases as a power-law function of velocity with a negative exponent known as the Vogel number. In this paper, two case studies are conducted to examine the connection between reconfiguration and turbulence dynamics within a canopy. First, a flume experiment was conducted with a model seagrass meadow. As the flow rate increased, both the mean and unsteady one-dimensional linear elastic reconfiguration increased. In the transition between the asymptotic regimes of negligible and strong reconfiguration, there is a regime of weak reconfiguration, in which the Vogel number achieved its peak negative value. Second, large-eddy simulation was conducted for a maize canopy, with different modes of reconfiguration characterized by increasingly negative values of the Vogel number. Even though the mean vertical momentum flux was constrained by field measurements, changing the mode of reconfiguration altered the distribution, strength, and fraction of momentum carried by strong and weak events. Despite the differences between these two studies, similar effects of the Vogel number on turbulence dynamics were demonstrated. In particular, a more negative Vogel number leads to a more positive peak of the skewness of streamwise velocity within the canopy, which indicates a preferential penetration of strong events into a vegetation canopy. We consider different reconfiguration geometry (one-and two-dimensional) and regime (negligible, weak, and strong) that can apply to a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic canopies. C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

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