Lucile A. Carver Mississippi

Riverside Environmental

Research Station:

LACMRERS Douglas J. Schnoebelen

Director

IIHR – Hydroscience and Engineering

Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of Iowa

Partners and Collaborators

•USACE: Marvin Hubbell and Karen Haggerty

•USGS, La Crosse: Barry Johnson, Bill

Richardson, Jeff Houser & others

•IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering: Larry

Weber (Director), and my students Brice Stafne,

Oscar Hernandez, and Carrie Davis(Post-Doc)

•Geosciences: Art Bettis, Adam Ward, & Frank

Weirich, Dave Campbell, Peifang Wang, Hohai

Univ., Lali Ghogheliani, Georgia Institute of

Technology

IIHR - Hydroscience and Engineering

• Originated about 90 years ago

• Staff interested in sediment

transport, river mechanics, ecology, river restoration, basin-scale hydrology, atmospheric sciences, fluid mechanics, bio-fluids engineering experimental and computational methods

• 775 Alumni from 55 Countries

• 60 graduate students

Overview

IIHR - Hydroscience and Engineering

•Fluid Mechanics Group

•Water and Air Group

•Environmental Hydraulics Group

IIHR - Hydroscience and Engineering

Before LACMRERS—Mussels and

the Pearl Button Industry

Mussels were abundant in pre-development times

Early reports suggest mussel beds spanning the entire river width

In the 1800’s mussels were harvested to find pearls

Harvesting intensified with the rise of the pearl button industry, circa 1890

• Mass harvest caused

decline in mussels

on river

• Land donated by

Association of

Button Manufactures

• Purpose - Freshwater

mussel research and

propagation

Pearl Button Industry

Fairport Federal Biological Research

Station was Built in 1914

From the photo at the Fish Hatchery

LACMRERS—A new research station

Lock and

Dam 22

• Built on the 1914 Fish Hatchery Site

• Carver Charitable Trust

• Groundbreaking

• Completion 2001

LACMRERS—Located on Pool 16 (5 miles

upstream from Muscatine, IA) •Colocated with present

DNR Fish Hatchery

•Excellent location on the

river for research

Pool 16

Lucille A. Carver - Mississippi Riverside

Environmental Research Station

Lucille A. Carver - Mississippi Riverside

Environmental Research Station

•Over 7,500 square feet: large classroom with projector, water-quality

lab, sediment lab, field preparation lab, kitchen, shop, laundry/shower

facilities.

•Ability to pump Miss. River water directly to lab for experiments and

monitoring/sampling 24/7.

•24 ft multipurpose pontoon boat for classes, sediment coring, water-

quality

•20 ft and 18 ft tunnel hull boats for hydroaccoustics, sampling,

biology

•Over 1 million dollars in field and laboratory equipment including:

Lucille A. Carver - Mississippi Riverside

Environmental Research Station—Cont. • 10 water quality real time sensors sondes, 10 nitrate sensors

sondes, and 10 turbidity sensor sondes

•Vibra-core coring rig—can collect 10-15 ft continuous cores

•Complete sediment lab with sedigraph, scales, ovens, muffle furnace,

fume hood, camsizer sediment analyzer, sediment gamma ray

detector and moisture analyzer

•Complete water-quality lab with all water-quality sampling equipment,

digital titration kits, meters, spectrophotometer, Turner Fluorometer,

microscopes, pumps/filters, ppb water system, and fume hood

•IDEX unit for rapid bacteria detection

•Submersible fluormeters, complete gw sampling gear and pump,

pressure transducers, other water-quality sondes for field use

The Mississippi River—Why the need for

large river research and education?

The Mississippi River-- Our Nation’s River

2,320 miles long, drainage

basins in all or part of 31 States!

Discovery of

Miss. By DeSota

The Upper Mississippi River—A

Major Transportation Route

• Average tow of 15 barges, but up to 40

• Standard barge 195 ft long by 35 ft wide

• Grain export for the Midwest

• 126 million tons of cargo a year on the UMR alone. Billions of dollars for the cargo industry

Upper Mississippi River—A National

Treasure for Wildlife and Recreation

• There are 485 species of fish, mussels, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles

• 1.2 billion dollars in recreation (1990 price level)

Great Floods

of 1993 and

2008 on the

Mississippi

River

Devastation in

the billions of

dollars!

The Upper Mississippi River

1890

Historical River Existing River

Changes over time on the river, how best

to manage now and for the future?

IIHR – Upper Mississippi River

• Upper Mississippi River Basin Navigation and Ecological Sustainability Program (NESP)

• Authorization under the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. Still waiting for full funding.

• Panel charged with developing a science-based adaptive management plan for navigation, ecological and economic sustainability

NESP Science Panel

LACMRERS—“The Best for the Big

River” Large River Research,

Education, and Collaboration:

Lock and

Dam 22

• Research—hydrodynamic modeling, mussels,

sediment, water quality, and hydroacoustics

• Education– undergraduate and graduate, K-12th

grade, and general public

• Collaboration– IDNR, USGS, USACE, USFW, USEPA,

Hohai University. Other stations--Kibbe station, Miss.

River Museum, Great Rivers Station, other schools and

agencies

LACMRERS MISSION

STATEMENT

• LACMRERS will apply IIHR’s established strengths in engineering hydraulics, computational fluid dynamics, and remote-sensing technology to understand river ecology in partnership with researchers in other disciplines, such as agriculture, meteorology, and urban and regional planning.

• LACMRERS will provide an environment and state-of-the-art field experiment facilities for multi-disciplinary education and research on large-river ecosystems;

Cont’d • LACMRERS will coordinate its activities with river-

monitoring stations along the Upper Mississippi and provide avenues for public dissemination of river data; and

• LACMRERS will establish partnerships with government, industry, universities and private organizations to enhance understanding of large-river ecosystems;

• LACMRERS will provide opportunities to area schools and universities to develop and conduct field-based educational programs, including short courses and workshops for industry and government agencies;

LACMRERS—Current Research

•Hydroacoustics

•Hydrodynamic & Water Quality Modeling

•Mussel Research

•Sensor and Real Time Data

•Sediment Coring and Analysis

Multibeam Hydrographic Survey

System

•512 ―beams‖ for detailed

mapping

•Coverage of large areas

•Data for modeling

Multibeam Hydrographic Survey—

Iowa River at Iowa City Bridge Piers

Details of Sediment

Structure for Mapping

and Modeling

Tracking ripples

on tops of sand

dunes!

Multibeam Hydrographic Survey—Iowa

River, Scour Hole and Coffer Dams

Lock and

Dam 22

Coffer Dam

Bridge Piers

Scour Hole

Iowa River

Hydroacoustics and Flooding

Highway 65 bridge south of Des Moines, Iowa during

flooding June 11, 2008.

Photographs by Sergeant Amy Kramer of the Pleasant Hills Police Department

Bridge Scour, Highway 65

Hydrodynamic modeling

•Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Branch of Fluid Mechanics

•Uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems

involving fluid flow (air or water)

•Building block is Navier-Stokes Equations (define any single-phase flow)

•Heavily used in Mechanical Engineering

•2-D and 3-D modeling

Hydrodynamic Modeling

•Fluent --commercially available software

•Building the mesh and defining conditions

•Sensitivity and Validation

•Linking to Water-Quality

•Similarities to GW Modeling

Structured vs. Unstructured Meshes

Structured

Type of mesh Basic Idea Features

Unstructured

Meshed in blocks

Meshed all in one geometry

• Harder to grid

•Typically more efficient

• Easier to grid

• More complex geometry

• Typically not as efficient

Two-dimensional Mesh for Inundation Model

UI Campus Inundation Model: 41,800 cfs

McNary Lock and Dam Forebay Temperature CFD Model Study

McNary Dam-Grid Generation

3-D Model, Mesh is huge over 6 million cells

Hydrodynamic Modeling

•First order principles and physics based

•Discharge, velocities and residence times of

water

•Flow variations as structures are added or

removed

•Particle tracking

Eulerian vs. Lagrangian Framework Flow

Eulerian – Flow field is stored on a grid

Flow

Lagrangian – Solution stored on individual

particles

Grid point where

flow field solution

is stored

Lagrangian water quality sampling to look at how chemicals may degrade or are

processed in the environment.

Are you watching the flow move past you or are you riding a parcel of fluid?

If you are watching the fluid move past you – Eulerian

If you are sitting on a parcel of fluid/fish – Lagrangian

Individual particles

(e.g. fish)

Coupling Hydrodynamic Models

with Water-Quality Current Models • Control volume analysis

• Complicated environmental

parameterization

• 1D or 2D hydrodynamics

• Limited ability to resolve hydraulic

features

Our Objective • Represent the multi-dimensional nature of

nitrogen cycle processes

• Minimize estimation and/or measurement

of biogeochemical parameters

• Resolve local hydrodynamic features, 3-D

modeling

• Better represent and simulate the

relationship between hydrodynamic and

nutrient cycling processes

• Numerical simulations to be used in

project development and planning

process

Water-Quality and Nutrients • Nutrient loading from

agricultural runoff impacts aquatic ecosystems thru

– Eutrophication

– Gulf Hypoxia

– Human health concerns

– Major concern locally and worldwide

N.N. Rabalais, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium

Total

Nitrogen

Total

Phosphorus USGS, both

Encyclopedia Britannica

Nutrient Conceptual Model Nutrient Loading

•Concentration

•Loading

Geomorphology •Sediment Composition

•Resuspension

•Bed Movement

Hydrology •Volume

•Duration

Nitrogen •Nitrate (70%)*

•DON (15%)*

•PON (15%)*

Phosphorus •Particulate

•Dissolved

Nutrient Dynamics

Microbial Processing-

Oxidation & Reduction •Denitrification

•Nitrification

•Anammox

Macrophytes •Habitat Suitability

•Growth Rate

•Flow Resistance

•Nutrient Uptake

Algae •Habitat Suitability

•Growth

•Transport

•Nutrient Uptake

Biogeochemical Condition

(site specific)

Pool-Scale Nutrient Budgeting

Basin-Scale Management

Gulf Hypoxia Mitigation

*From James et al. 2008

Backwater-Wetlands and Nutrients

• Riparian wetlands are natural

environments for nutrient

processing and uptake

• Engineered systems to mitigate

excessive nutrient loading

W.J. Mitch and J.G. Gosselink

Peoria Journal Star

Project Location- Round Lake

Round

Lake

UMR Main

Channel

Lock & Dam 7

La Crosse, Wisconsin

I-90

Hydrodynamic Model

Development • Bathymetry - USGS Bathymetric Survey (Rogala, 1998)

• Water surface profile - Trimble R8 RTK GNSS (IIHR)

• Discharge - RD Instruments Streampro and 1200 KHz Rio Grande

ADCPs (IIHR)

• Computational Mesh- 325,000 element, Structured Mesh

Unsteady Hydrodynamic Solution

• Fluent commercial CFD software

• Single dominant flow path

• Max velocity ~0.4 m/s in channel

• Lateral recirculation and stagnant zones

Numerical Particle Tracking

• Track 5,000 neutrally- buoyant particles from inlet to outlet

• Analyze reaction time as a function of particle residence time profile

• Random walk function accounts for turbulent dispersion – Calculates instantaneous velocity of a particle using

stochastic tracking, based on turbulent kinetic energy

Nitrate Transport and Reaction

• Three-dimensional species

transport

• Fully-coupled surface denitrification

reaction at the bed

• Investigation of two individual

reaction models

– 1st order decay

– Michaelis-Menten reaction kinetics

Nitrate Transport and Reaction

• Proof of concept and model sensitivity

simulations

• Initial and inflow concentration of 1.25 mg/L

• Representative of fully-mixed condition

following a flood event

Predictive Capabilities

Comparison- Nitrate Concentration

Validation with field samples

• Collaborate with USGS

UMESC to collect field data

used to identify site-specific

reaction parameters and

calibrate/validate the model

• Data collected compared well

to model

• Next Steps: • Apply modeling framework to different

aquatic environments

• Incorporate of aquatic plants on nutrient

dynamics and hydraulics

• Pool wide modeling

Aquatic Macrophytes

• Incorporate macrophyte influence

– Hydrodynamics

• Flow Resistance

• Transport

– Nutrient Uptake

• Delivery

• Growing Cycle

• Couple with ecological modeling framework (e.g. IIHR mussel dynamics model) to address

– Macrophyte Habitat Suitability

• Depth

• Bed Shear Stress

• Substrate Characteristics

– Macrophyte Growth

• Temperature

• Nutrient Load

• Photosynthesis

Linking Water-Qualtiy and CFD

Modeling • Nutrient removal is controlled by both delivery and reaction

• CFD can be used simulate the relationship between delivery and reaction

• Initial model results demonstrate similar patterns in hydraulics and nitrate

concentration to those observed in the prototype

• Future efforts will consider spatial heterogeneity in flow resistance and

reaction rate

Freshwater Mussel Research

Lock and

Dam 22

Higgins eye, Hickorynut, Butterfly,

Monkeyface, etc.

Higgins eye mussels

(federally endangered)

Giant floater and threeridge covered by

zebra mussels - July 2004

Freshwater Mussel Reproductive Cycle

Mussel Bed Study Area

• Located in Navigation Pool 16 of the Mississippi River (42 km)

• Adult mussels filter 15 to 45 liters per day

• Three Mississippi River reaches contain 61 to 212 million mussels

Mussel Bed Morphology • Mussel density studies displayed mussels tend to prefer areas of

the mussel bed that are less prone to siltation†

• Multi-beam sonar infers lower flow velocities (thus more siltation)

on the upstream side of the bed than those in the middle of the

bed†

†Young, 2006

Characterization of Mussel Bed in Buffalo, Iowa

Mississippi River Sensors

Lock and

Dam 22

• Real Time Monitoring

• Nitrate

• DO

• Turbidity

• Temperature

• pH

• Specific Conductance

Mississippi River Sensor Network

Lock and

Dam 22

Water quality monitoring network – Water quality probes

– Data logging and telemetry system

• Campbell Scientific CR1000 data

logger

• AirLink Communications Raven CDMA

cellular modem

• NP12 rechargeable battery and charge

controller and solar panel

– Real-time monitoring and control software

is used to remotely manage the sensor

network

• Sampling rates can be increased to

capture greater temporal resolution

during significant events

• Customized alarms with email

communication to efficiently monitor

network operation

Odessa Update - Sensor Sites (4)

Inlet

River

Schafers

Access

Outlet

Large-Scale Monitoring Network to

Support Nutrient Model Development

Sediment Coring

Education

Summer Course (3 week intensive)

•Lectures twice a week (M & W) for 3 hrs each

•Field and Lab twice a week all day (T & Th)

•Project with Written and Oral Presentations

•Connecting the Classroom and the Field Water quality sampling and qa/qc

Hydroacoustics

Pesticides

GW/SW Interaction

Geology/Sediment/Coring

Water quality and quantity Class

Education

68

Summary

• LACMRERS

Collaboration/Coordination

• Modeling—Flow and Water-Quality

• Numerous Common Areas of Interest

• Opportunities for Graduate Research

Projects

• Class and Short Course Opportunities

68

Thank You!

douglas-schnoebelen@uiowa.edu