Author(s)

Yuexia Zhou^*, Yuji Toda^*, Eijiro Kubo

Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.

Riparian vegetation is known to affect the flood flow and the riparian environment, and it is important for river engineers to know the vegetation dynamics in river. Despite a number of researches have been performed for vegetation dynamics, the mechanism of initial vegetation recruitment is still not clear. In this study, two field surveys by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) remote sensing, UAV aerial photographs analysis and a numerical simulation were conducted to detect the location of initial vegetation recruitment and explore its relationship with hydrology and river morphology. The initial vegetation recruitment was identified by comparing vegetation distributions before and after vegetation germination. Most of the initial vegetation recruitment locations were found either along dunes on sandbar or along the wet/dry rotational area of shore bank. Results of the aerial photographs analysis showed that the initial vegetation recruitment occurred at the downstream side of crest of dunes. As for the vegetation recruitment zone located along shore bank, the relative elevation of different recruitment zones is almost same, and the mean value of the relative elevation is around 0.33 m. With the comparison of the contour map of river morphology and the initial vegetation recruitment zone, the shape of initial vegetation recruitment zone is positively consistent with the shape of river morphology distribution. The results of numerical analysis show that the initial vegetation recruitment zone located along shore bank experienced intermediate flood pulse. The inundation frequencies during seed dispersal and germination period for the internal and external boundaries of vegetation recruitment zone are 23.87% and 6.2%, respectively.

Initial Vegetation Recruitment, UAV Remote Sensing, Downstream Side of Dune, Relative Elevation, Inundation Frequency

Zhou, Y. , Toda, Y. and Kubo, E. (2018) Distribution of Initial Vegetation Recruitment on Bare Bar in Sand Bed River. Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 10, 441-460. doi: 10.4236/jwarp.2018.104024.