Effective diffusivity and mass flux across the sediment-water interface in streams

SB Grant; MJ Stewardson; I Marusic

Journal article

Effective diffusivity and mass flux across the sediment-water interface in streams

SB Grant, MJ Stewardson, I Marusic

Water Resources Research | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2012

DOI: 10.1029/2011WR011148

Abstract

The exchange of water between a stream and its hyporheic zone (defined as the sediment beneath and immediately adjacent to a stream) underpins many ecological and hydrological functions in turbulent streams. Hyporheic exchange can be parameterized in terms of an effective diffusion coefficient D eff and considerable effort has gone into developing process-based models and empirical correlations for predicting the value of this transport parameter. In this paper we demonstrate previous laboratory estimates for D eff can be biased by as much as a factor of 10, due to errors in the equations and/or ambiguities in the variables used to reduce data from transient tracer experiments in flow-throug..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Michael Stewardson Author

Ivan Marusic Author

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Grants

Awarded by National Science Foundation

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Awarded by Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr; Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)

Funding Acknowledgements

Financial support provided by a 2011 UCI Henry Samueli School of Engineering Research Ignition Fund and a National Science Foundation Award 0724806 (to SBG); awards from the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne School of Engineering Iconic Research Project (to IM), and Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP100200170) (to MS). The authors especially thank O'Connor for providing compiled data used in his meta-analysis of hyporheic exchange [O'Connor and Harvey, 2008] and Tonina for providing raw data from a set of recirculating flume experiments [Tonina and Buffington, 2007]. The manuscript was greatly improved based on feedback from four anonymous reviewers.