LIST WATER LECTURE on Critical Zone sciences #3

 

Fine sediment dynamics in mesoscale watersheds

Fine sediments are important drivers of global fluxes in the critical zone. Understanding their dynamics requires measurements complementary to those measured conventionally, such as suspended sediment concentrations and flow rates, including high temporal resolution measurements to assess their spatial origin and transit times in watersheds. Through examples of methodological and instrumental developments undertaken in Grenoble in combination with the use of physically-based distributed models, we will illustrate how this allows us to advance our understanding of the processes responsible for the high variability characterizing the dynamics of fine sediments in mesoscale alpine and mediterranean watersheds.

Dr Cédric Legout
Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE)
Grenoble, France

 

River Platform for Monitoring Erosion (RIPLE) in mountainous rivers

We will present the development of the RIPLE platform designed for the monitoring at high temporal frequency (~ 10 min) of water discharge, solid fluxes (bedload and suspended load) and properties of fine particles (settling velocity) in mesoscale rivers. Many instruments are integrated in this single, centralized device, which is autonomous in energy and connected to the 2G/3G network. A user-friendly interface has been developed enabling to visualize the data collected by the platform. To date, RIPLE has been tested on two river sites located in the French Alps: the Romanche river in Bourg d'Oisans (45.1158°N, 6.0134°E, 710 m elevation) and the Galabre river in La Robine sur Galabre (44.1586°N, 6.2360°E, 680 m elevation). We will illustrate the functioning of the platform through these two examples.

Dr Guillaume Nord
Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE)
Grenoble, France

>>> Winter-Spring Session 2020 Programme