RECONSTRUCTING SEDIMENT SUPPLY, TRANSPORT AND DEPOSITION BEHIND THE ELWHA DAMS

The Elwha River watershed in Olympic National Park of Washington State, USA is predominantly a steep, mountainous landscape where dominant geomorphic processes include landslides, debris flows and gullying. The river is characterized by substantial variability of channel morphology and fluvial processes, and alternates between narrow bedrock canyons and wider alluvial reaches for much of its length. Literature suggests that the Elwha watershed is topographically and tectonically in steady state. The removal of the two massive hydropower dams along the river in 2013 marked the largest dam removal in history. Over the century long lifespan of the dams, approximately 21 million cubic meters of sediment was impounded behind them. Long term erosion rates documented in this region and reservoir sedimentation data give unprecedented opportunities to test watershed sediment yield models and examine dominant processes that control sediment yield over human time scales.

In this study, we aim to reconstruct sediment supply, transport and deposition behind the Glines Canyon Dam (most upstream dam) over its lifespan using a watershed modeling approach. We developed alternative models of varying complexity for sediment production and transport at the network scale driven by hydrologic forcing. We simulate sediment supply and transport in tributaries upstream of the dam. The modeled sediment supply and transport dynamics are based on calibrated formulae (e.g., bedload transport is simulated using Wilcock-Crowe 2003 with modification based on observed bedload transport in the Elwha River). Observational data that aid in our approach include DEM, channel morphology, meteorology, and streamflow and sediment (bedload and suspended load) discharge. We aim to demonstrate how the observed sediment yield behind the dams was influenced by upstream transport supply and capacity limitations, thereby demonstrating the scale effects of flow and sediment transport processes in the Elwha River watershed.