Installation of Impact Plates to Continuously Measure Bed Load: Elwha River, Washington, USA
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 3
Abstract
In 2008 and 2009, a series of bed load impact plates was installed across a channel spanning weir on the Elwha River, Washington. This is the first permanent installation of its kind in North America and one of the largest anywhere. The purpose of this system is to measure coarse bed load during and after the removal of Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams. It is estimated that of sediment have accumulated behind both dams, with 45–50% of the total accumulated volume expected to be eroded through natural processes. The impact plate system consists of 72 plates installed at a diversion weir downstream from both dams and 5 km upstream from the river mouth. Of the 72 plates, 46 are instrumented with a geophone and 26 with an accelerometer. Collection of physical bed-load data for calibration of the geophone plates has begun, with additional measurements to be collected in the future. This paper describes the specifics of the Elwha impact plate system and the ongoing process to collect bed-load measurements for system calibration.
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Acknowledgments
This project has been funded by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Science and Technology Office, Grant No. 0115. The authors sincerely appreciate the thoughtful comments from three anonymous reviewers, greatly improving this paper. The authors would like to thank Smokey Pittman and others at Graham Matthews and Associates for their tremendous effort in collecting the bed-load measurements on the Elwha River. We would also like to acknowledge Jeff Marr and associates at the University of Minnesota for their early flume testing of the impact plates at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 3 • March 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 11, 2014
Accepted: Oct 15, 2014
Published online: Nov 19, 2014
Published in print: Mar 1, 2015
Discussion open until: Apr 19, 2015
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