Numerical investigation of the effects of distributary bathymetry and roughness on tidal hydrodynamics of Wax Lake region under calm conditions

Shafiei, Hassan; Soloy, Antoine; Turki, Imen; Simard, Marc; Masséi, Nicolas

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2021.107694

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The Manning's n bottom friction scheme was chosen due to its capability to yield lower drag coefficients compared to the Chezy formulation, particularly in deep waters. The specific Manning coefficient value used is 0.023 m -1/3 s (Shafiei et al, 2022;Feizabadi et al, 2023). Feizabadi et al 10.3389/fmars.2024.1387180…”

Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of river delta hydrological connectivity to changes in river discharge and atmospheric frontal passage

Feizabadi,

Li,

Hiatt

2024

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Atmospheric frontal passage is a common meteorological event that can significantly affect hydrodynamics in coastal environments, including the hydrological connectivity between channels and floodplains that regulates material transport in river deltas. This study is focused on the influence of atmospheric cold fronts on the hydrological connectivity between channels and floodplains within the Wax Lake Delta using the Delft3D FM model. The results demonstrate a substantial effect of passing cold fronts on the exchange of water and transport fraction between the primary channels and floodplains. This impact is intricately connected to the morphodynamical characteristics of the floodplains, the intensity of cold fronts, river discharge, Coriolis force, and tidal currents. The passing cold fronts can enhance or reverse the direction of water exchange between channels and floodplains. For floodplains, the passage of cold fronts can lead to an increase in the rate of water exchange by as much as five times. In the WLD, a substantial fraction of water, 39-58%, is flowing through the floodplains to the bay at the delta front influenced by the prevailing discharge, although there is a significant spatial heterogeneity. Passing cold fronts can alter the transport distribution, depending on the phase of the front. An increase in river discharge tends to bolster floodplain connectivity and lessen the effects of cold fronts. Conversely, decreased river discharge results in reduced connectivity and exacerbates the fluctuations induced by cold fronts. Moreover, the findings indicate that from the apex to downstream, the contribution of channels decreases as they become shallower, while the role of the floodplains increases, leading to a less distinct demarcation between channels and floodplains. It has also been noted that an increase in river discharge correlates with an increased contribution from floodplains to transfer water to the bay.

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Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of river delta hydrological connectivity to changes in river discharge and atmospheric frontal passage

Feizabadi,

Li,

Hiatt

2024

Front. Mar. Sci.

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“…The WLAD system is a frequently modeled landscape [e.g. Liang et al, 2015;Hiatt and Passalacqua, 2017;Xing et al, 2017;Christensen et al, 2020;Olliver and Edmonds, 2021;Shafiei et al, 2021] and exemplifies many of the complex morphological features our method is designed to tackle: channel widths that span a range of scales O(10 1 − 10 3 m), dendritic and loopy network structures, substantial amounts of channelwetland connectivity [Hiatt and Passalacqua, 2015], and leveed or otherwise hydrologicallyinactive regions adjacent to important flow conduits. While every riverine landscape is ultimately different with unique challenges for designing a model, we think the WLAD application provides a good general example in which to test our methodology.…”

Section: Study Site: Wax Lake and Atchafalaya Deltasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Connectivity Into Hydrodynamic Models: An Automated Open-Source Method to Refine an Unstructured Mesh Using Remote Sensing

Wright¹,

Passalacqua²,

Simard³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Hydrodynamic models are an essential tool for studying the movement of water and other materials across the Earth surface. However, the possible questions which models can address remain limited by practical constraints on model size and resolution, particularly in fluvial and coastal environments in which hydrodynamically-relevant landscape features are topologically complex and span a wide range of spatial scales. The rise in popularity of unstructured meshes has helped address this problem by allowing mesh resolution to vary spatially, and many models support local refinement of the mesh using breaklines or internal regions-of-interest. However, there remains no standardized, objective, or easily reproducible method to define or implement internal features between different users. The present study aims to address whether remote sensing information can be used to fill in that gap, by embedding information about hydrological connectivity and landscape structure directly into an unstructured mesh. We present a fully-automated image processing methodology for preserving dynamically-active connected features in the unstructured 2D shallow-water model ANUGA, while reducing computational demand in other less active areas of the domain. The Unstructured Mesh Refinement Method (UMRM) works by converting a binary input raster into a collection of closed, simple polygons which can be used to internally refine the model mesh, meanwhile preserving landscape connectivity and enforcing model-related constraints. The UMRM and ANUGA are both fully open-source and agnostic regarding the source of remote sensing data used as input, which can include optical, radar, and topographic datasets. We demonstrate the use of the UMRM workflow by applying it to a large-scale model of the Wax Lake and Atchafalaya Delta distributary system in coastal Louisiana. Our model mesh is refined using a long-term time-series of optical Planet imagery, a short-term time-series of interferometric SAR measurements of water level change, and lidar-derived topography data. We compare the results of the connectivity-preserving mesh (CPM) to results from an unrefined mesh using a uniform mesh resolution, and find that the UMRM decreased the number of mesh elements, simulation time, and output data size by around a third, without any loss in model accuracy when compared to in-situ and remotely-sensed water level measurements. To our knowledge, this study is the first to use non-topographic remote sensing data to constrain the mesh structure of a hydrodynamic model, and results from our test application suggest that doing so can result in noteworthy reductions in computational demand.

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“…We illustrate our proposed workflow toward the development of a hydrodynamic model of the WLAD system in coastal Louisiana (Figure 1). The WLAD system is a frequently modeled landscape (e.g., Christensen et al., 2020; Hiatt & Passalacqua, 2017; Liang et al., 2015; Olliver & Edmonds, 2021; Shafiei et al., 2021; Xing et al., 2017) and exemplifies many of the complex morphological features our method is designed to tackle: channel widths that span a range of scales

\mathcal{O}\left(1{0}^{1}-1{0}^{3}m\right)

, dendritic and loopy network structures, substantial amounts of channel‐wetland connectivity (Hiatt & Passalacqua, 2015), and leveed or otherwise hydrologically inactive regions adjacent to important flow conduits. While every riverine landscape is ultimately different with unique challenges for designing a model, we think the WLAD application provides a good general example in which to test our methodology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Connectivity Into Hydrodynamic Models: An Automated Open‐Source Method to Refine an Unstructured Mesh Using Remote Sensing

Wright

Passalacqua

Simard

et al. 2022

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Due to widespread advancements in computing power and accessibility in the 21st century, researchers studying the Earth's surface are now able to probe questions regarding the movement of matter and energy through landscapes at unprecedented scales and resolution. The availability of remote sensing imagery and physics-based numerical models have revolutionized the study of large-scale geophysical systems (Balsamo et al., 2018), and enabled simulation of full-scale experiments regarding the effects of different processes on the function and form of landscapes. A number of numerical models have been developed to study the movement of water, sediment, and other materials using finite-volume (FVM) and finite element (FEM) approaches, and hydrodynamic models in particular have proven to be useful tools for advancing our understanding of hydrological transport

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Numerical investigation of the effects of distributary bathymetry and roughness on tidal hydrodynamics of Wax Lake region under calm conditions

Cited by 6 publications

References 44 publications

Response of river delta hydrological connectivity to changes in river discharge and atmospheric frontal passage

Response of river delta hydrological connectivity to changes in river discharge and atmospheric frontal passage

Integrating Connectivity Into Hydrodynamic Models: An Automated Open-Source Method to Refine an Unstructured Mesh Using Remote Sensing

Integrating Connectivity Into Hydrodynamic Models: An Automated Open‐Source Method to Refine an Unstructured Mesh Using Remote Sensing

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