ESM 234: River Systems

1. ESM 234: River Systems Tom Dunne tdunne@bren.ucsb.edu Tel: 893-7557 Lectures 10:00 � 11:15 am Mondays and Wednesday Office hours by appointment and when the office door is open (Bren 3510) After class is a predictable time to catch me TA: Lee Harrison, Ph.D. Candidate in Earth Science Dept., Consultant, Labs at 5 � 7:50 pm Wednesdays, Bren Computer lab.

2. Course description Hydrologic and geomorphic background of environmental management problems concerning large river systems. Analysis of the processes of flooding, sedimentation, and morphological change in channels, floodplains, deltas, and alluvial fans. Effects of climate, land use and engineering. Practice in analyzing management problems associated with large rivers and their floodplains, including a California field exercise. [Report writing on results] Practice in using simulation models to analyze environmental management problems in river systems [Report writing on results.]

3. Syllabus Jan 8: River valleys as habitat for humans and their management problems Jan 10: River valleys as habitat for more charismatic species. Geological and ecological conceptions of large rivers Jan 10: Lab assignment on river management problems Jan 17: Flow regimes Description statistical prediction deterministic prediction Jan 17: Lab assignment on basin flow prediction Jan 19: Santa Clara River field trip 8:00 am � 2 pm

4. Jan 22: Flood regimes generation processes and controls deterministic prediction emerging forms of prediction Jan 24: Flood regimes flood routing and prediction of inundation remote sensing and other forms of inundation predictions Jan 29: Flood regimes statistical analysis and probabilistic prediction historical and �paleohistorical� reconstruction Jan 31: Managed flow regimes flow regulation inter-basin water transfers Jan 31 : Lab assignment on river hydraulics and flood routing

5. Feb 5: Sedimentation: sources and storage of sediment Feb 7: Sediment transport processes Feb 12: Sediment transport predictions Feb 14: Sediment transport and channel sedimentation modeling Feb 14 : Lab assignment on sediment transport and routing Feb 21: Flood regimes: impacts of floods Feb 26: Flood regimes: flood risk management

6. Feb 28: Flood regimes: effects of dams and reservoirs Feb 28: Lab/field assignment on river channel management Mar 5: River channel form and behavior Mar 7: Floodplains, deltas and estuaries Mar 12: Management of sedimentation Mar 14: River restoration

7. Evaluation scheme Five reports on problems assigned in lab One web research Three computer modeling exercises One analysis of a field problem in river management (requires attendance at field trip, 8 am-2 pm on Friday Jan 19). Grading based on thoroughness of analysis and effectiveness of writing.

8. Suggested Reading (Univ. Bookstore) Jeffrey F. Mount, California Rivers and Streams: The Conflict Between Fluvial Process and Land Use, Univ. of California Press, 1995 (paperback). A. Robert, River Processes: an introduction to fluvial dynamics, Oxford Univ. Press, 2003 (paperback). I�ll send you other stuff electronically

9. The Real Books on Big Rivers Sanche de Gramont (1975) The Strong Brown God: The story of the Niger River, Hart, Davis, MacGibbon, London, 350 pp. Bates (1868?) A Naturalist on the River Amazon Alan Moorehead, The White Nile Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile Peter Forbath, (1977) The River Congo, Harpers & Rowe, New York Joseph Conrad (1923) Heart of Darkness, New York, Charles Greer (1979) Water Management in the Yellow River Basin of China, Univ. of Texas Press, Austin, 174 pp.

10. V.S. Naipaul (1979) A Bend in the River, Knopf, New York Mark Twain Life on the Mississippi John Hersey A Single Pebble (Yangzte) M. Goulding, N.J.H. Smith, and D.J. Mahar (1995) Floods of Fortune: Ecology and Economy along the Amazon J. M. Barry (1997) Rising Tide: The great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America, Simon & Schuster J. Stine, Mixing of the Waters, Deep as it comes (1927 flood in the Mississippi delta), Univ. Arkansas Press M. Childs (1982) Mighty Mississippi: biography of a river, Ticknor & Fields, New York, 204 p. R. Kelley (1989) Battling the Inland Sea: floods, public policy, and the Sacramento Valley, Univ. California Press, Berkeley. Peter Hessler, River Town: two years on the Yangtze

11. River systems as habitat for humans and their management problems

12. [Large] River Systems Large? Rivers too big to be impacted by most land transformation caused by humans. [Watershed Analysis, ESM 235, covers smaller rivers]. Controls on their behavior are mainly: physiographic (i.e. driven by global tectonics and postglacial geological history); hydroclimatological (driven by global climate) land-sea level changes near mouth engineering within and near the channel Continental-scale rivers down to regional rivers larger than a few 1000 km2. Our field study sites will be the Santa Clara R. (~4000 km2), Sacramento R. (~ 70,000 km2), San Joaquin (82880) km2)

13. River Systems? Not just the channel, but: whole basin channel network valley floor estuary or delta lakes, if present (natural and artificial) River systems comprise features that have enormous social and ecological significance. The alluvial lowlands of large rivers are foci of settlement for vast human populations sustained by water supply, fertile soils, and ease of land and water transport.

14. Large river systems require management For safety/habitability For conservation or restoration of functions Already create �wealth� that needs to be maintained or enhanced Resources already fully committed or over-committed Any rearrangement of the resources and their functions is likely to be contentious and gradual Requires careful, thorough analysis using all the tools in Bren (and in you!)

15. What is a tool? Governing concepts: your own and others� Understanding of processes: �natural� social economic political legal Organizing approaches (e.g.): Systematic documentation of resource characteristics Conceptual model development Adaptive management Simulation and �War gaming� Computational modeling ESM 234 lab exercises and more Communication

16. Some governing concepts Water rights Navigable water ways Rivers as political boundaries

17. River systems are complex systems, through which are focused irregular fluxes of water and mobile terrestrial materials derived from the lithosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and technosphere. The dynamics of the transport, storage, and interactions of these materials creates channel and valley-floor environments with which the river continually interacts, creating certain functions and environmental conditions. The resulting functions and environments change both gradually and episodically due to both external forcings and internal dynamics. General Principles

18. Ecological changes (including human exploitation) therefore include both successional changes and perturbations of various intensities, which may re-set or replace the succession. The continual creation results in spatial and temporal complexity (rather than a single continuum of environments linked by transport.) Differences among river systems and reaches in the relative strengths of gradual and episodic change result in differences of complexity and function. [Affects transferability of information]. General Principles

19. Large rivers have histories (and face futures) of environmental change The continental-scale river systems of Earth represent some of the largest and most dynamic environmental units on the planet They express the results of global change, as indicated by the elemental and isotopic records of past environmental variations such as ice age-age conditions, other climatic fluctuations, vegetation change, human settlement found in alluvial and deltaic sediments.

20. Large rivers have histories (and face futures) of environmental change Environmental records indicate how large river systems work and how they change Brought to society�s attention when Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi Delta Similar acknowledgment (last week) about the Sacramento R. floodplain and California-Bay Delta Governments and other large, complex management systems with long-term commitments � narrow interests have difficulties acknowledging evidence of change and its attendant uncertainties. They tend to resist the idea that there is any useful understanding of environmental processes, because of the complexity and need for flexibility that is implied by acknowledging the existence of dynamic processes.

21. Thus, large river valleys present some enduring, refractory problems of environmental management, which societies must control or adjust to. In class, we will review examples of such management issues, which you need to prepare yourselves to participate in. Examples: Colorado River floods and sedimentation below Glen Canyon Dam California streamflows Everglades Restoration Anoxic marine zone off the mouth of the Mississippi River Flood hazard management along Lower Mississippi River International conflict over water rights and development plans on Nile River Aral Sea CALFED San Francisco Bay-Delta Ecosystem Restoration Program

22. Typical River Problems to Manage: Colorado R.

23. Typical River Problems to Manage: California streamflows

24. Typical River Problems to Manage: Everglades

25. Typical River Problems to Manage: Gulf of Mexico �Dead Zone� and Mississippi R. contaminants

26. Typical River Problems to Manage: New Orleans Flood Hazard

28. New Orleans flood riskNYT, 2002

29. New Orleans Flood RiskNYT, 2002

30. Nile R. basin: upstream flow use and plans for diversion to the Western Desert

31. Typical River Problems to Manage: Global disruption of river flow regimes

32. Typical River Problems to Manage: Aral Sea inflow diversions

35. News

36. Bay-Delta watershed

37. Bay-Delta location

43. Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta channels

45. Lower Sacramento River Lower Sacramento bendsLower Sacramento bends

46. Sacramento River Sacramento straight reachSacramento straight reach

47. Sacramento R.

48. Sacramento R. bars

49. Merced River after gold dredging and gravel extraction, before restoration

50. Merced River after gold dredging and gravel extraction, before restoration

56. CalFed

58. Regional perspective: differing priorities

64. Program perspective