Interpretation of sediment transport indicators, Point Wolfe River, New Brunswick

The Point Wolfe River has been the subject of several studies relating to salmon habitat within Fundy National Park. This study was undertaken to provide a tool that would aid in the assessment of the depth of riverbed mobility and to support ongoing studies relating to salmon habitat in the Point Wolfe River System.; Three primary steps were involved in fulfilling the objectives of this study. The first step involved the development of a hydrologic model that simulated the flow in the river system in response to historical meteorological conditions. PCSWMM was used to construct the hydrologic model.; The second step involved the selection of ten representative reaches throughout the river system and building mathematical hydraulic models of each of them. The sites were selected such that a wide variety of habitat types were included in the study. The hydraulic models were used to estimate the water depths and velocities associated with the flow rates estimated by the hydrologic model. HEC RAS was used to conduct the hydraulic modelling.; The third step in the study involved the examination of three methodologies for relating the peak flow conditions that were estimated using the hydrologic and hydraulic models to peak depths of riverbed mobility at each of the selected reaches. The results of these calculations were compared to field measurements of the riverbed mobility that were made over a two year period at each of the representative reaches. The field measurements were made using scour chain devices, which recorded the maximum depth of riverbed mobility over a given time period.; The study concluded that the equation based on DuBoys' theory provided a similar trend to the observed data, but the calculated values were significantly lower than the observed data. The mass flux and the regime based methodologies were not found to be well-suited to this application and did not provide solutions that were in any way comparable to the observed data.