Hydrologic review services. Final project report, May 24--December 31, 1993
- Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research on the runoff, sediment, and contaminant transport in Big Buck Canyon at the Los Alamos National Laboratory began in 1993. The final research goal is to estimate how fast and how much contaminated sediment is moving in the canyon. Due to equation of state experiments involving high explosives, soils in the vicinity of the three test sites have been contaminated with heavy metals such as uranium and cadmium. There are three main parts to the research that will eventually be combined to address the final goal of estimating total contaminant movement. The first part involves the collection and interpretation of experimental field data, such as rainfall and runoff amounts. The second part involves numerical modeling the watershed response to rainfall inputs. The third part involves experimental chemistry work to evaluate the concentration of contaminants in a representative sample of sediment. The details about the model development and testing are presented. The simulation of a large flood in 1991 did not compare well with observations of the event. The model seriously underpredicted the flow out of the watershed because the value of the hydraulic conductivity in the channel was too large. The infiltration of water into the channel bed, known as transmission losses, is a direct function of hydraulic conductivity. Field measurements of hydraulic conductivity yielded values that are much larger than those found in the literature. Consequently, the high input values of hydraulic conductivity produced model results that underestimated the flow. Future research on the process of transmission losses is recommended to resolve this issue and improve the accuracy of the model results.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 251342
- Report Number(s):
- LA-SUB-96-1; ON: DE96009515; TRN: 96:016388
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Oct 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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