Gravel replenishment and active-channel widening for braided-river restoration: The case of the Upper Drac River (France).

Massive gravel replenishment combined with active-channel widening could theoretically improve the morphological recovery of altered braided rivers but this restoration strategy was not yet tested in the field. A recent braided restoration project based on this principle was set up to restore a 4.2 km long reach in the Upper Drac River (French Alps) using 355.000 m3 of gravels to rise the bed level and to design a 100-m wide trapezoidal cross-section. The aim of this paper is to capture the morphological trajectory after restoration in order to evaluate efficiency and sustainability of this strategy. A Before and After Control Impact monitoring design has been used by combining a repetitive topographic survey (using airborne LiDAR data and terrestrial topographic surveys along cross-sections), an assessment of bedload supply to the restored reach using sediment tracing and active-layer surveys, and a systematic analysis of historical aerial photographs. In a particular context of low hydrological forcing after restoration, the restored reach adjusts with local braiding reference that highlights the efficiency of the restoration strategy. Despite this spontaneous braiding recovery, scouring processes are observed locally along the restored reach and the sustainability remains uncertain even if a good connection to sediment sources was observed. Feedbacks make it possible to propose recommendations to river managers who plan to use similar strategy of braided river restoration. This field study demonstrated for the first time that sediment replenishment combined with channel widening can be an efficient solution for the spontaneous recovery of braiding conditions in altered alpine gravel-bed rivers.

A field experiment to evaluate the cleaning performance of sewer flushing on non-uniform sediment deposits.

The results of a field experiment to evaluate the scouring effect of a single flush operation in a compound-section sewer channel in Paris, France, are presented in this paper. Full monitoring of the experiment allowed identifying flush-related transport/deposition key processes playing a role on the evolution of the deposited sediments. Overall, the flush was able to scour sediments accumulated over the channel invert up to a significant distance from the gate. The analysis of the results revealed that the flush had a different impact on the various sediments present in the bed mixtures, with most of the eroded volume including sediment particles smaller than the median grain size.