Abstract
Check dams have long been used to stabilize stream beds in mountain areas. Several approaches (including morphological and mechanistic) have been used for designing the spacing and dimensions of these works, with the objectives of limiting bank erosion and to control local slopes. However, little is actually known about how much check dams influence the bedload discharge in a given stream. Do they change the peak bedload discharge and/or do they limit the transported volumes for a given hydrological event? To answer this question we performed several flume experiments, on steep slopes, both with and without check dams. The outlet bedload discharge was measured and analyzed in term of quantity and frequency. We observed that the natural fluctuations of bedload transport were impacted by the presence of check dams, leading to a lowering of the erosion volumes and an increase in fluctuation frequencies.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Irstea and INTERREG-ALCOTRA European projects RISBA and SEDALP. The authors would like to thank Ashley Dudill and an anonymous reviewer who greatly contributed to this paper by providing helpful reviews of an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Piton, G., Recking, A. (2015). The Effects of Check Dams on Sediment Transport Dynamics on Steep Slopes. In: Lollino, G., Arattano, M., Rinaldi, M., Giustolisi, O., Marechal, JC., Grant, G. (eds) Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09054-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09054-2_9
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