Advanced methods for a sustainable sediment management of reservoirs

Abstract

As a result of an increasing demand on storing water, sustainable reservoir management will become more and more important in the future. Minimizing, or in the best case avoiding, the loss of storage due to sedimentation is a challenging task because each reservoir has unique boundary conditions. Hence, not every management strategy is suitable for a given reservoir. Due to the combination of state of the art measurement methods and hydro‐morphodynamic models, reservoir sedimentation can be better predicted in the future and the success of sediment management strategies can be assessed. The development of advanced measurement methods makes it possible to obtain data with a high accuracy, but also with a high spatial and temporal resolution. The combination of recent measurement approaches with reliable hydro‐morphodynamic numerical prediction models, enhances a highly accurate prediction and understanding of governing processes. This opens new possibilities for an objective selection of important parameters, essential spatial domains as well as for the temporal resolution of measurements. This will finally lead to more reliable predictions about the future of reservoirs that provide water for human life, health and wealth. The presented scientific work gives an overview of recent developments to investigate hydromorphological processes in reservoirs.