Fieldwork – WoWW

3rd IAHR Young Professionals congress

12. December 202216. December 2022
by Adina Moraru

The International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR) has hosted its third Young Professionals congress from the 28th November to the 2nd December 2022. The congress aimed to encourage networking and mentorship for young researchers in fields such as Fluvial Hydraulics, Hydroinformatics, Flood Risk Management or Sediment Transport, Experimental Methods and Instrumentations, among others. The event was held virtually and gathered over 1,300 attendees.

Adina took part in the congress and presented her most recent findings in the form of an extended abstract and poster in the Flood Risk Management session, chaired by Susanna Dazzi (University of Parma, Italy) and Ravindra Vitthal Kale (National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee, India), and moderated by David Ferras (IHE-Delft, the Netherlands) and Ingrid Silva (Sweco, Sweden). The presentation and following Q&A were recorded by the congress organizing committee and will available soon.

Panelists, chairs and moderators during the Flood Risk Management session (© A. Moraru)

Adina presented her most recent research on “The role of soft data to understand flood dynamics in an ephemeral mountain river“, where she highlighed the hydro-morphological information provided by photographs, videos, media coverage and witness testimonies during the 2017 flash flood in Utvik (western Norway), complementary to remote sensing techniques. The dataset she provides can be used for model calibration, validation, as well as to improve flood early warning systems. Further research on this topic is available in the award-winning journal article Moraru et al. (2021).

Flood

Editor’s choice awarded to flash flood journal article

10. November 20214. August 2022
by Adina Moraru

Flash news! Adina Moraru and Michal Pavlíček’s (work package 2) recently published journal article has been awarded the category of “Editor’s Choice“! (see snapshot below) What article, do you mean? We wrote a post about it as soon as the manuscript came out with some of its highlights (see a sneak peek in the figure below), if you’re curious. This is an honor and great news for World of Wild Waters. Now, how does this work?

The manuscript is public and open to access here. No need to be subscribed anywhere.

“Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of journals from around the world, in this case Water (Switzerland). Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to authors, or important in this field. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.”, writes on the publishing journal’s website.

In short, this means that:

The article get’s a blue-colored label (see snapshot above) that helps identify Adina and Michal’s manuscript as high quality.
Also, Water (Swizterland) has a section where all the Editor’s Choice articles are collected for the readers, and this increases the likelihood that the manuscript is visited and read by the journal readers.
Last, but not least, it’s a badge of honor to receive the validation and “stamp of approval” of scientific editors, especially so early in our careers (this is Adina‘s first ever published journal manuscript).

Flood

Reconnaissance fieldtrips during late Autumn

17. November 202015. July 2021
by Adina Moraru

After a considerable long period without fieldtrips due to the SARS-CoV-2, and just before a new wave hit us all, WoWW sought for calibration and validation data for its hydraulic numerical models. Although the likelihood of flooding decreases considerably during the cold Norwegian Autumn, Oddbjørn, Michal and Adina visited two mountainous localities, namely Oppdal in Central Norway and Stryn in West Norway.

Vekveselva river (in Oppdal) has a step-pool morphology and a steep slope, which makes it very attractive from the hydraulic and geomorphological perspectives, as this makes the river and valley susceptible to both floods and landslides. The weather was cloudy and slightly windy and snow has started to accumulate in the last few weeks (see the first gallery of photos below). These factors, together with an unstable phone/GPS signal, made the task of using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (aka drone) challenging. In addition, most of the selected reach had ice accumulation. In order to gain expertise and overcome the aforementioned challenges, WoWW allied with the department of Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute forecasted heavy rain for Storelva river in Utvik (in Stryn) during early November and Michal and Adina drove to the West of Norway spontaneously. Although the weather resulted drier than predicted and the river barely carried water, the snow from the mountains has not yet reached the river downstream by the fjord. The wind did not encourage to fly the drone, however, they did experiment with acoustic (i.e. ADCP) and salt dilution gauging methods (see the gallery of photos below).

Storelva river in Utvik was flooded during summer 2017 and now flood-protection measures have been implemented. The channel has been excavated and a dyke has been built to protect the adjacent houses, formerly affected by the flash flood. The new channel shape demands for a new data set for ongoing research on flood risk in Stryn. The Norwegian winter is coming and the field work season comes to an end. Further attempts to obtain field data in Central and West Norway will be conducted during spring, once the snow has melted. A manuscript analyzing the hydrology of the 2017 flood was published in Hydrology Research this spring, and the efforts are now focused on understanding the hydrodynamics and the morphodynamics of the flood.