Asher P. Schick

DISTANCE OF MOVEMENT OF COARSE PARTICLES IN GRAVEL BED STREAMS

Distributions of distance of bedload particle movement were examined in two gravel bed streams using several hundred magnetically tagged cobbles and pebbles. The compound Poisson model of Einstein-Hubbell-Sayre and a simple gamma function model were compared with observed distributions of moved particles, and of all particles. Both models fit the data reasonably well for small mean displacements, but notable misfits occurred in an event with large mean displacement. When mean particle travel distance approaches the scale of bar spacing, trapping in the bars interrupts particle progress and the dispersion process. The data remain very noisy, so definitive discrimination of suitable models will require trials with more than 103 particles.

Sediment yield exceeds sediment production in arid region drainage basins

We use 10 Be and 26 Al to determine long-term sediment generation rates, identify significant sediment sources, and test for landscape steady state in Nahal Yael, an extensively studied, hyperarid drainage basin in southern Israel. Comparing a 33 yr sediment budget with 33 paired 10 Be and 26 Al analyses indicates that short-term sediment yield (113–138 t· km –2 · yr –1 ) exceeds long-term sediment production (74 ± 16 t· km –2 · yr –1 ) by 53%–86%. The difference suggests that the basin is not in steady state, but is currently evacuating sediment accumulated during periods of more rapid sediment generation and lower sediment yield. Nuclide data indicate that (1) sediment leaving the basin is derived primarily from hillslope colluvium, (2) bedrock weathers more rapidly beneath a cover of colluvium than when exposed, and (3) long-term erosion rates of granite, schist, and amphibolite are similar.

A high magnitude storm and flood in a hyperarid catchment, Nahal Zin, Negev Desert, Israel

In October 1991 a high magnitude rainstorm flood, estimated return period 40 years, occurred in Nahal Zin, a 1400 km2 catchment in the hyperarid Negev Desert. The meso-scale structure of the storm was a curved squall line that developed from a thunderstorm in accordance with the topography of the catchment divide, by which it was strongly affected. Tropical moisture reached the area via the subtropical jet stream, in conjunction with a lower level northward intrusion of the Red Sea trough (RST-N) into the Mediterranean Sea. Rainfall, as measured at the few and sparse gauging stations, was much too small to account for the resulting large flood. Peak flow and other hydraulic characteristics of the flood were indirectly reconstructed. The techniques of palaeoflood hydrology used were based on sedimentological evidence of fine-grained flood sediments deposited in back-flooded tributaries, as well as on other stage indicators. The HEC-2 procedure was employed to determine water surface profiles. The spatial and temporal characteristics of the event were studied through a combination of rainstorm analysis, remote sensing, hydrological and sedimentological data; they jointly explain the magnitude and timing of tributary contributions producing the integrated flood in the main channel. The flood as reconstructed reveals a three-peak hydrograph: two peaks were generated by the same storm but had different floodwave arrival times in the main channel; the third resulted from a local rainstorm which occurred on the following day and covered only one tributary. The curved structure of the storm and its dynamics in relation to catchment orientation resulted in storm move- ment in tandem with the floodwave. The synchronous contribution from all main tributaries preserved evidence of the floodwave both in stage and volume by replacing the transmission losses in the sections with thick alluvium. Other high magnitude floods on record for the large Negev Desert catchments are caused by a cold upper air incursion associated with the RST-N. Most of them occur in the autumn and are caused by storms with high-intensity rainfall. This is in stark contrast with the flooding behaviour of the semi-arid zone further north, which is linked primarily to the core of the Mediterranean winter. The complexities involved in the generation of a large desert flood, as revealed by this study, illustrate the fallacy of applying routine hydrological modelling to such events, and underline the need to study the processes involved in adequate detail.

Impact of climatic change on an arid watershed: Nahal Yael, southern Israel

Abstract The Nahal Yael basin is underlain chiefly by schist, amphibolite, and granite. Thin (generally

A noncalibrated rainfall‐runoff model for large, arid catchments

A distributed, field-based rainfall-runoff model was developed for the 1400-km2 arid catchment of Nahal Zin, Israel. No calibration with measured flow data was performed. The model used rainfall radar input applied over a catchment that was spatially disaggregated into different terrain types according to hydrologically relevant surface characteristics. Hortonian overland flow generation on each type was parameterized independently using values of initial loss and temporal decay of infiltration determined from existing field experiments. Delimited by topography, this catchment wide pattern of rainfall excess was distributed over 850 tributary catchments (model elements). Runoff delivery from the model elements to the adjoining channel segments was timed by applying a mean response function determined in an environmentally similar experimental catchment. Inside the channel network the MVPMC3 method of the Muskingum-Cunge technique was used for streamflow routing, accounting for channel dimensions and roughness. For each channel segment a constant infiltration rate was applied to account for transmission losses and discontinued when the wetting front reached the bottom of the available alluvial storage. Within two model tests, one separate for the routing component (October 1979) and one for the complete model (October 1991), observed hydrographs and reconstructed peak discharges were successfully simulated. The spatially distributed model output showed that during the October 1991 test, tributaries produced preceding peaks that wetted the channel alluvium before the main flood had arrived and transmission losses lost their significance downstream. Total maximum model uncertainty was estimated including the uncertainty ranges of each model parameter. In general, this study shows that field-based data on generation and losses of runoff may be incorporated into a distributed hydrologic model to overcome calibration with the poor data records of arid high-magnitude events.

AN EVALUATION OF TWO TEN-YEAR SEDIMENT BUDGETS, NAHAL YAEL, ISRAEL

The method used to derive a crude ten-year sediment budget for Nahal Yael—a small hyper-arid catchment in the Southern Negev Desert—is applied to a later ten-year period, for which a much more accurate sediment budget is available. Results indicate that the budget of the first decade has overestimated the suspended sediment output by a factor of four, and underestimated the bed material output by a factor of two. Evaluated against the background of similar sediment budget studies, it is concluded that the main source of potential errors in sediment budgets, especially in those involving considerable amounts of bed material, lies not so much in the volumetric before-after comparisons, based on surveying. Rather, errors are caused mainly by the inadequate procedures presently available for the estimation of sediment input into, and output from, the studied reach.

The palaeoflood record of a hyperarid catchment, Nahal Zin, Negev Desert, Israel.

The palaeohydrology of Nahal Zin, a 1400 km2 catchment in the hyperarid Negev Desert, is inferred from slackwater deposits and palaeostage indicators in a canyon near its lower end. The palaeoflood record, augmented by the instrumental and historical records of the last decade, includes 28 floods ranging from 200 to 1500 m3s−1 over the last 2000 years. This helps to reanalyse the frequency of floods in this drainage system. The clusters of floods around 1000 years BP and again during the last 60 years are characterized by high flow magnitudes. Periods with many floods correspond well to periods with high Dead Sea levels and are probably relatively wet periods, while periods with few floods correspond well to low Dead Sea levels indicating a drier climate. Fluctuations in the frequency of floods are typical of periods of transition from one climate regime to another. Copyright

The transport of gravel in an ephemeral sandbed river

The channel dynamics of an ephemeral sandbed river, the Metsemotlhaba in southeast Botswana, were studied over a five year period using tagged magnetic particles of pebble and cobble size, scour chains and topographic cross-sections, with particular emphasis on the three-dimensional dispersal of gravels, patterns of scour and fill and depth of active layer. Two major flow events of equivalent magnitude occurred, moving the tagged particles, in December 1987, a mean distance of 837 m at a mean burial depth of 0·40 m, and in March 1991, a mean distance of 263 m at a mean burial depth of 0·39 m. The volume of mobile sediment, based on scour depth and distance of travel, was 2·7 times greater in the December 1987 event, in which the mean scour depth was almost twice the mean burial depth of the tagged particles. The distribution of distance of movement was asymmetrical in this first flood, when the tracer started from a surface location, but was monotonic thereafter. Intervening small to medium events yielded limited tracer movement with a mean burial depth equivalent to depth of scour. The tracer moved in the low and transitional flow regimes. Burial depth distribution followed the gamma model. Field data confirm that longitudinal transport is independent of particle size and shape, and strongly skewed with respect to distance, whilst depths of scour in excess of 1 m for high magnitude events suggest that scour values predicted from the empirical equation of Leopold et al. underestimate by an order of magnitude. Copyright

Evidence for transport of bedload in waves: Analysis of fluvial sediment samples in a small upland stream channel

Abstract Data pertaining to the transport of fluvial sediment sampled in detail during a five hour long event in a small upland stream channel in the extremely arid Southern Negev are presented. Considerations based on comparative evaluations of water discharge, stream power, total and fractional sediment concentration, and total and fractional sediment discharge suggest that bedload transport in channels of even very small upland catchments practically devoid of continuous alluvial cover takes place in waves, which are not a priori related to any water discharge characteristic, but rather reflect some intrinsic feature of watershed dynamics, such as slope-channel topographic contrasts or fluvial bifurcation. The regular spacing of pools and riffles and of gravel bars in the more alluvial reaches downstream may therefore be initiated from upstream.

Fluvio-pedogenic processes in an ephemeral stream channel, Nahal Yael, Southern Negev, Israel

Abstract A detailed stratigraphic survey conducted in the alluvial fill of the channel of Nahal Yael—a small catchment in the Southern Negev Desert—indicates the existence of a continuous, compacted, red-colored unit at an average depth of 50 cm beneath the surficial grey non-cohesive alluvium. Granulometric distinction between the grey and the red alluvium is evident only within the fine (