Numerical prediction of ice-jam profiles in lower Athabasca River

• Main Author: Beltaos, Spyros
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2019
• Subjects: Athabasca River; Fort McMurray
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/96018; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjce-2018-0542

A recent study of dynamic ice breakup processes and their erosional potential in the Lower Athabasca River concluded that breakup can result in very large sediment loads, which cannot be predicted at present. As a first step towards building suitable modelling capability, a user-friendly, public-domain, ice jam model is calibrated and validated using 2013 and 2014 water level measurements as well as historical data sets by others. The calibrated model is shown to reliably compute the profiles of different ice jams occurring in a 60 km reach that extends both above and below Fort McMurray. The model also enabled development of an ice jam stage-flow relationship for the city of Fort McMurray, which can help assess present and future, climate-modified, flood risk. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.