Publications related to Sedimentation

Continuous monitoring of morphological changes from sediment augmentation by field measurements and flume experiments

In this study, we present results from continuous field monitoring and a flume ex-periment of a sediment augmentation measure in a residual flow reach of the Swiss midlands. A straight morphological channel with fixed bed material was constructed to repres ...

2023

Exploring the efficacy of reservoir fine sediment management measures through numerical simulations

Giovanni De Cesare, Azin Amini, Samuel Luke Vorlet, Montana Marshall

Reservoir sedimentation is one of the main challenges in the sustainable operation of large reservoirs because it causes volume loss, affecting hydropower production capacity, dam safety, and flood management. To ensure the sustainability of deep reservoir ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Reduction of riverbed clogging related to sediment flushing

Giovanni De Cesare, Romain Maxime Dubuis

The ecological effects of dams on sediment and river flow have been subject to an increasing attention, leading to the implementation of mitigation measures such as environmental flow release and sediment replenishment. However, fine sediment dynamics have ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Clogging of riverbed substrates by fine sediment

Romain Maxime Dubuis

Riverbeds represent the habitat of numerous aquatic species. Exchanges between the groundwater, the hyporheic zone and the surface flow are also essential for river ecosystems. Fine sediment transported by rivers deposits inside or on top of the bed and mo ...

EPFL2023

Experimental characterization of root-reinforced riparian sediment deposits in a restored and widened river course

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona

The Arbogne River is located mainly in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. The River was meandering through the plane at a very low gradient and several exceptional historic floods with large sediment accumulation are mentioned. After important river training wo ...

2023

p Spatio-temporal deposition profile of an experimentally produced turbidity current with a continuous suspension supply

Giovanni De Cesare, Shun Nomura

A turbidity current is a turbulent, particle-laden gravity current that is driven by density differences resulting from the presence of suspended sediment particles. The current travels downslope, bearing a large amount of sediment over a great distance, a ...

2022

Experimental Study on Bedload Transport and Bedforms: Behaviour and Interplay in Steep Turbulent Streams

Ivan Pascal

In mountain regions, steep streams play an important role in water and sediment connectivity. In these highly dynamic systems, water flow features, sediment fluxes and stream morphologies are tightly interlinked over a broad range of temporal and spatial s ...

EPFL2022

Benthic Biofilms in Glacier-Fed Streams from Scandinavia to the Himalayas Host Distinct Bacterial Communities Compared with the Streamwater

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Leïla Ezzat, Massimo Bourquin, Matteo Tolosano, Emmy Marie Oppliger, Jade Brandani, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Virginia Tadei, Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tyler Joe Kohler, Michail Styllas, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Martina Andrea Schön

Microbial life in glacier-fed streams (GFSs) is dominated by benthic biofilms which fulfill critical ecosystem processes. However, it remains unclear how the bacterial communities of these biofilms assemble in stream ecosystems characterized by rapid turno ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2022

Numerical simulation of sediment dynamics with free surface flows

Arwa Mrad

We present a numerical model for the simulation of 3D mono-dispersed sediment dynamics in a Newtonian flow with free surfaces. The physical model is a macroscopic model for the transport of sediment based on a sediment concentration with a single momentum ...

EPFL2021

Quasi-stationary flow structure in turbidity currents

Giovanni De Cesare, Shun Nomura

A turbidity current is a particle-laden current driven by density differences due to suspended sediment particles. Turbidity currents can transport large amounts of sediment down slopes over great distances, and play a significant role in fluvial, lake and ...

IRTCES2020

Hypolimnetic oxygen depletion rates in deep lakes: Effects of trophic state and organic matter accumulation

Alfred Johny Wüest, Robert Vincent Schwefel, Beat Mueller

This study investigated the consumption of oxygen (O-2) in 11 European lakes ranging from 48 m to 372 m deep. In lakes less than similar to 100 m deep, the main pathways for O-2 consumption were organic matter (OM) mineralization at the sediment surface an ...

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography2020

Continuously-fed density currents over impermeable and porous substrates

Sara Venuleo

Gravity currents are buoyancy-driven flows having a significant impact on the environment and human life. They can be observed in a vast range of natural and anthropogenic scenarios, such as seawater and freshwater, the atmosphere, or industrial processes. ...

EPFL2020

Recent developments on management and release techniques of fine sediments in reservoirs

Anton Schleiss

Sedimentation is known as the process of filling up natural lakes and manmade reservoirs by sediment transforming finally into floodplaimns. Its main reason is the sediment yield transported by rivers as suspended or bed load into the reservoirs. Reservoir ...

2019

The performance of collars on scour reduction at tandem piers aligned with different skew angles

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Sargol Memar

Local scouring is a leading cause of bridge collapses. To protect bridges against local scouring, different countermeasures have been proposed and tested in the literature. In this study, the performance of collars was evaluated for scour reduction at two ...

2020

Innovative methods to release fine sediments from reservoirs developed at EPFL, Switzerland

Anton Schleiss, Giovanni De Cesare, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Azin Amini, Sabine Chamoun

Electricity generation, water supply, flood protection, flow regulation and navigation are amongst the main services provided by reservoirs. Sedimentation affects the sustainability of reservoirs, by reducing their storage capacity, and increases the negat ...

2019

Interplay of S and As in Mekong Delta sediments during redox oscillations

Rizlan Bernier-Latmani, Laurent Louis José Charlet

The cumulative effects of periodic redox cycling on the mobility of As, Fe, and S from alluvial sediment to groundwater were investigated in bioreactor experiments. Two particular sediments from the alluvial floodplain of the Mekong Delta River were invest ...

2019

Floodplain Land Cover and Flow Hydrodynamic Control of Overbank Sedimentation in Compound Channel Flows

Anton Schleiss, Mário Jorge Rodrigues Pereira Da Franca, Carmelo Juez Jiménez, Hannes Jenny

Overbank sedimentation is predominantly due to fine sediments transported under suspension that become trapped and settle in floodplains when high-flow conditions occur in rivers. In a compound channel, the processes of exchanging water and fine sediments ...

2019

Multidecadal sediment balance modelling of a cascade of alpine reservoirs and perspectives based on climate warming

Anton Schleiss, Pedro Filipe De Almeida Manso, Sebastián Guillén Ludeña

This paper presents a comprehensive methodology to model and determine the annual sediment balance of a complex system of interconnected reservoirs, based on the detailed interpretation of a multi-decadal data series of reservoir management and modelling o ...

2018

Large Eddy Simulations of sediment entrainment induced by a lock-exchange gravity current

Carmelo Juez Jiménez, Jessica Zordan, Foteini Kyrousi, Alessandro Leonardi

Large Eddy simulations of lock-exchange gravity currents propagating over a mobile reach are presented. The numerical setting allows to investigate the sediment pick up induced by the currents and to study the underlying mechanisms leading to sediment entr ...

2018

Sediment mass movement of a particle-laden turbidity current based on ultrasound velocity profiling and the distribution of sediment concentration

Giovanni De Cesare, Shun Nomura, Jumpei Hitomi

Particle-laden flows or turbidity currents along the seafloor are important to the formation and erosion of submarine topography. To understand the mass-transport process, flume tests were carried out with a continuous supply of quartz-laden suspension. Th ...

2018