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A substantial increase in fluvial sediment supply relative to transport capacity causes complex, large-magnitude changes in river and floodplain morphology downstream. Although sedimentary and geomorphic responses to sediment pulses are a fundamental part of landscape evolution, few opportunities exist to quantify those processes over field scales. We investigated the downstream effects of sediment released during the largest dam removal in history, on the Elwha River, Washington, USA, by measuring changes in riverbed elevation and topography, bed sediment grain size, and channel planform as two dams were removed in stages over two years. As 10.5 million t (7.1 million m3) of sediment was released from two former...
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In 2011, the National Park Service commenced the incremental removal of two century-old dams along the Elwha River, Washington, in order to restore ecological and sediment-delivery processes (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1996; Duda and others, 2008, 2011; Curran and others, 2009). Elwha Dam (32-m high; 8 km from the Strait of Juan de Fuca) was completed in 1913, and Glines Canyon Dam (64-m high; 22 km from the Strait of Juan de Fuca) was completed in 1927 (fig. 1). Elwha Dam formed Lake Aldwell and Glines Canyon Dam formed Lake Mills. During the decommissioning period, each dam was notched from the top down in progressive steps to allow a metered release of sediment to downstream river reaches (Randle and others,...
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