1st Edition

River Flow 2016 Iowa City, USA, July 11-14, 2016

Edited By George Constantinescu, Marcelo Garcia, Dan Hanes Copyright 2016

    Understanding and being able to predict fluvial processes is one of the biggest challenges for hydraulics and environmental engineers, hydrologists and other scientists interested in preserving and restoring the diverse functions of rivers. The interactions among flow, turbulence, vegetation, macroinvertebrates and other organisms, as well as the transport and retention of particulate matter, have important consequences on the ecological health of rivers. Managing rivers in an ecologically friendly way is a major component of sustainable engineering design, maintenance and restoration of ecological habitats. To address these challenges, a major focus of River Flow 2016 was to highlight the latest advances in experimental, computational and theoretical approaches that can be used to deepen our understanding and capacity to predict flow and the associated fluid-driven ecological processes, anthropogenic influences, sediment transport and morphodynamic processes.

    River Flow 2016 was organized under the auspices of the Committee for Fluvial Hydraulics of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR). Since its first edition in 2002, the River Flow conference series has become the main international event focusing on river hydrodynamics, sediment transport, river engineering and restoration. Some of the highlights of the 8th International Conference on Fluvial Hydraulics were to focus on inter-disciplinary research involving, among others, ecological and biological aspects relevant to river flows and processes and to emphasize broader themes dealing with river sustainability. River Flow 2016 contains the contributions presented during the regular sessions covering the main conference themes and the special sessions focusing on specific hot topics of river flow research, and will be of interest to academics interested in hydraulics, hydrology and environmental engineering.

    Keynote Lectures

    Mark Twain, the Mississippi, and modern river engineering
    G.E. Galloway

    Dam safety in the USA and numerical dam-break modeling for decision support in critical infrastructure protection
    M.S. Altinakar

    Exploiting surface turbulence metrics and secondary flows in straight river reaches and open channels
    E.A. Cowen, S.A. Schweitzer, V.R. Citerone, A.T. King, E.D. Johnson & R.O. Tinoco

    Science to inform management for resilient river systems in a changing world
    P. Goodwin & A.W. Tranmer

    Fluvial dike overtopping: Experimental advances
    W.H. Hager

    Messy rivers are healthy rivers: The role of physical complexity in sustaining ecosystem processes
    E. Wohl

    A. River flow and transport processes
    A1.Laboratory and eddy-resolving numerical investigations of fundamental physical processes and transport in open channels
    A2. Field studies and numerical investigations of flow and transport in natural streams
    A3. Innovative field and laboratory instrumentation for the study of flow in open channels
    Special session: Experimental techniques used in fluvial hydraulics. Organizer: C. di Cristo, University of Lazio, Italy
    Special session: Image-based measurements and video analysis. Organizer: Y. Ozeren, University of Mississippi, USA
    Special Session: Estimation of uncertainty in hydrometric measurements and other flow measurements of environmental scale. Organizer: J. Gonzalez, South Florida Water Management District, USA
    Special session: Environmental role of hydraulic interfaces. Organizers: A. Marion, University of Padua, Italy; F. Ballio, Politechnic University Milan, Italy; J. Aberle, NTNU-Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway & M. Zaramella, University of Padova, Italy
    Special session: Buoyancy-driven flows. Organizers: C. Adduce, University of Rome Tre, Italy & M. Franca, EPFL, Switzerland

    B. Sediment transport and river morphodynamics
    B1. Mechanics of sediment transport
    B2. Dynamics of bedforms and meandering streams
    B3. Large-scale river morphology and morphodynamics
    B4. Local scour around hydraulic structures
    B5. Numerical aspects of sediment transport and hyper-concentrated/granular flows
    Special session: Reservoir sustainability. Organizer: A. Cox, Saint Louis University, USA
    Special session: Applications of hydro-acoustics to river morphodynamics. Organizers: D. Hanes, Saint Louis University, USA & S. Wright, USGS, USA
    Special session: Hydrodynamics and morphodynamics of river confluences. Organizer: B. Rhoads, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
    Special session: Dynamics of meander cutoffs. Organizer: K. Konsoer, Louisianan State University, USA

    C. River Floods
    C1. Numerical prediction of floods
    C2. Channel-floodplain interactions driven by floods
    C3. Geomorphic dam-break flows and breach formation
    C4. Flood propagation and control
    Special session: Flood science for flood prediction, mitigation, and resilience. Organizers: M. Muste, L. Weber & N. Young, IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering, University of Iowa, USA

    D. River management, ecology, and restoration
    D1. Sustainable engineering solutions for management of natural streams
    D2. River training and design of river restoration structures
    D3.Ecological aspects of river flows
    D4. Flow in vegetated channels
    Special session: Large wood in fluvial ecosystems. Organizer: V. Ruiz-Villanueva, University of Bern, Switzerland
    Special session: Fish passage. Organizer: M. Politano, University of Iowa, USA

    Author Index

     

    Biography

    Dr. Constantinescu obtained his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering in 1992 from the Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, Romania. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, USA (1997) and held post-doctoral positions with the Arizona State University and the Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University. In 2004, he joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa as an Assistant Professor. He is currently a Professor at the same university. Dr. Constantinescu has expertise in numerical simulations of complex turbulent flows using a wide range of modeling techniques and large-scale parallel computing. His present main research interests are in river restoration and modeling of stratified flows, shallow flows, flow and transport processes around hydraulic structures, sediment transport and morphodynamics in alluvial channels, flows in porous media. Dr. Constantinescu co-authored more than 200 research papers of which close to half were published in peer-reviewed journals. He is an associate editor of several scientific journals in the area of hydraulics and hydrology.