"Proceedings, Federal Interagency Workshop,
"Sediment Technology for the 21'st Century,"
St. Petersburg, FL, February 17-19, 1998"

Bureau of Reclamation's Needs in Sediment Technology for the 21st Century.

By
Yang, Chih Ted and Young, Christ A.

Abstract

The Bureau of Reclamation(Reclamation) conducts sediment related studies of river and reservoir to meet planning, design, operation, maintenance, and environmental needs of Reclamation's projects. Reclamation's needs in sediment technology can be classified into two major categories: (1) Improved sediment measurement and survey technologies applicable to field conditions; (2) Improved computational methods and capabilities to predict and simulate sediment transport and river morphologic changes. This paper provides a brief summary of Reclamation's sediment technology needs for the 21st Century.

Sediment measurement and survey technology
- Bed load measurement of coarse material--Different types of bed load samplers, such as the Helley-Smith and Elwha samplers, have been developed by FISP and other organizations. More field testing is needed to improve their accuracy and applicabilities to field conditions. Determination of the compatibility of measured results using different types of samplers is also important.
- More accurate direct/indirect measurement of roughness coefficients of natural rivers under different flow and sediment conditions--Roughness coefficients have been widely used for water surface profile and energy loss computations. Roughness varies with flow and sediment conditions. There is a lack of reliable and consistent methods for the determination of roughness coefficients under different flow and sediment conditions.
- Evaluate real time kinematic(RTK) GPS equipment for reservoir sedimentation survey--Commercially available RTK hydrographic survey equipment can allow collection of accurate water surface and bed profile elevations at a fast rate with relatively accurate horizontal and vertical positions. FISP should evaluate and compare the relative accuracies and field applicability of such equipment.
Computational capabilities
- Develop and/or evaluate computer models which can be applied to solving general river engineering problems with limited field sediment and hydraulic data.
- Develop and/or evaluate truly three-dimensional computer models for solving localized scour and deposition problems.
- Develop and/or evaluate process based computational methods for estimating surface erosion rate.--The application of the empirical Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is limited to the Eastern U. S. agriculture communities.

Workshop Contributions

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