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ABSTRACT
At a bend of a river, especially in the upstream mountainous region, complex sediment and hydraulic phenomena are
taking place and it is important to quantitatively evaluate the phenomena and to predict accurately the sedimentation of a
bar developed there. The study area of the Ibo River investigated in this study is classified as one of such a location and a
famous vegetation of extinction called Anaphalis margaritacea subsp. yedoensis (Kawarahahako in Japanese) can be
found in the bar area. Since the survival of the vegetation is directly related to the transport of sediment or bed variation
of the bar area mainly composed of cobbles, detailed investigation of the sediment components is indispensable for a
better understanding of the phenomenon. In this research, we successfully took aerial photographs of the target site by
using a multi-copter before and after several floods and compared the grain size distributions by an image analysis.
Keywords: Grain Size Distribution; Cobble Bar; Image Analysis; Multi-copter; BASEGRAIN
1. INTRODUCTION
The study area of this research, the river reach of the Ibo
River between 24.6km and 26.8km from the river mouth,
includes a large bend with a cobble bar. The Ibo River has YamazakiDaini(YD)
station
a drainage area of 810km2 with the main river length of
about 70km and flows into the Seto Inland Sea at about
50km west of Kobe city. Most of the river basin consists of
mountainous regions with an average bed slope of about
1/250 in the middle reach of our observation. The design
discharge, with a 100-year return period, has been set at
3000m3/s. This area was selected because the local bar can
be considered as a refuse place for one of the endangered Analysisarea
vegetation, Anaphalis margaritacea subsp. yedoensis
(Kawarahahako in Japanese), classified as Critically
Endangered in the Red Data Book of Japan (Asami et al.
2012). The evolution and involution of the vegetation has
been observed by Asami et al. (2013) for the past several
years and the cobble bar was found to be an appropriate 500m
refuse location for the vegetation even when the area was
submerged subject to a large flood several times during
the investigation periods. However, in order to investigate
the survival of the vegetation more in detail, field Figure 1 Measurement site of the Ibo River
measurements of flood flows and changes of bed
materials by the floods are necessary for reproducing the gauging station upstream of the site is the Yamazaki
phenomena by some numerical simulations. Regarding Daini(YD) station, about 4 kilometers upstream from the
the changes in bed materials of the cobble bar, we site. Another specific feature of the site is that there
successfully investigated the surface images of the bar developed a natural transverse step before the lower flow
before and after a relatively large floods in 2013. A multi- hits the facing mountain and at the same time large rocks
copter was used to capture the images of the cobble bar are distributed closer to the left bank after the bend, which
area and the images were used to analyze grain size all make the flow complicated.
distributions by using an image analysis software. In 2013, we had made a preliminary fields survey of the
site in June expecting a flood to occur in the following
2. MEASUREMENT SITE AND PAST FLOODS period. Floods actually occurred more than once in
October and we conducted the survey again in November.
As mentioned above, the measurement site includes a
The hydrograph at YD station is shown in Figure 2,
large cobble bar at the bend of the Ibo River. The overview
indicating there occurred a largest flood on September 1
of the measurement site is indicated in Figure 1. The
with a peak estimated discharge of about 1000m3/s. A
1
Figure 2 Hydrograph t Yamazaki Daini gauging station
Figure 4 Multi-copter used in surface image capture
2
Figure 7 Detection of particles by BASEGRAIN(23m)
3
Figure 8 Grain size distribution measured at various heights
Figure 10 Grain size distribution measured at various heights
4
(a) Point A
(b) Point B
4.2 Local comparison of grain distributions Figure 13 Grain size distribution at various locations
In order to compare the shape of the grain distribution
smaller gravel particles transported from upstream river
curves, several locations were selected within the bar. The
reach. In contrast, little change can be found in the lower
selected four locations are already indicated in Figure 6.
and inner region downstream of the bar such as for the
The respective results are compared in Figure 13. As
points C and D. These facts suggest that part of the
previously mentioned, the particle size increased slightly
cobbles in the upper bar area might have been carried
in the downstream side of the central large cobble zone.
away in the early stage of flood and deposited in the
The measured size distributions are provided in Figure
downstream zone while smaller grains were deposited in
13(a), clearly indicating this trend. At point B, particle size
the downstream area in the falling stage of flood due to
decreased significantly maybe due to the deposition of
the decrease of shear velocity. It should be noted again
5
that the lower inner zone of the bar corresponds to the
refuge place for the endangered vegetation, where particle
size does not show a large change during floods.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Measurements of exposed grain size distribution were
conducted successfully with the aid of airborne images
from a multi-copter and a sophisticated image analysis
software for grain images, BASEGRAIN. The
measurement results before and after the floods that
influenced the bed material clearly indicated spatial
change of representative grain diameters, larger in the
upstream zone and smaller in the lower inner zone, from
which the survival of the endangered vegetation can be
explained. Since the surface video images were recorded
during the floods, more quantitative discussion can be
made after the analysis of surface velocity distributions
and the change in bed elevation by the floods.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to the support by Prof. Kawatani and Prof.
Nakayama who are the emeritus professors of Kobe
University. This research was financially supported from
River Environment Fund sponsored by Japan River
Association.
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BASEGRAIN,http://www.basement.ethz.ch/services/To
ols/basegrain