Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2020ND090B

Hydraulic and hydrologic routing parameters in natural channels in North Dakota under spring snowmelt conditions

Institute: North Dakota
Year Established: 2020 Start Date: 2020-02-29 End Date: 2021-02-27
Total Federal Funds: $4,647 Total Non-Federal Funds: $9,294

Principal Investigators: Yeo Howe Lim

Abstract: Snowmelt is one of the processes intervening in the hydrological cycle and interacting with many other processes. Hydrological processes related to snow occur in large regions of the earth including North Dakota and their relationship with runoff coming from snowmelt is a recurrent. The purpose of this study is to re-examine the development, calibration, and application of hydrological model for natural channel in snowmelt runoff conditions. Two case studies are to be investigated: (1) the changes in the water elevations of two selected lakes connected by a natural channel (between Devils Lake and Stump Lake, North Dakota), and (2) the impacts of morphology of several selected natural channels in river reaches subjected to flooding during the past years. This result will lead to: (1) characterize the hydraulic conditions of the two lakes that are connected through a natural channel, and (2) derive useful hydrologic routing for channels and hence allow better prediction of the hydrologic conditions of watershed runoff at an outlet location. The outcomes will enable us to provide accurate flood forecasting for the coming years by flow routing with observing hydraulic and hydrologic data in the field, collecting past records from published data, modeling using hydrologic and hydraulic software.