Is the critical Shields stress for incipient sediment motion dependent on channel‐bed slope?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Data from laboratory flumes and natural streams show that the critical Shields stress for initial sediment motion increases with channel slope, which indicates that particles of the same size are more stable on steeper slopes. This observation is contrary to standard models that predict reduced stability with increasing slope due to the added downstream gravitational force. Processes that might explain this discrepancy are explored using a simple force‐balance model, including increased drag from channel walls and bed morphology, variable friction angles, grain emergence, flow aeration, and changes to the local flow velocity and turbulent fluctuations. Surprisingly, increased drag due to changes in bed morphology does not appear to be the cause of the slope dependency because both the magnitude and trend of the critical Shields stress are similar for flume experiments and natural streams, and significant variations in bed morphology in flumes is unlikely. Instead, grain emergence and changes in local flow velocity and turbulent fluctuations seem to be responsible for the slope dependency due to the coincident increase in the ratio of bed‐roughness scale to flow depth (i.e., relative roughness). A model for the local velocity within the grain‐roughness layer is proposed based on a 1‐D eddy viscosity with wake mixing. In addition, the magnitude of near‐bed turbulent fluctuations is shown to depend on the depth‐averaged flow velocity and the relative roughness. Extension of the model to mixed grain sizes indicates that the coarser fraction becomes increasingly difficult to transport on steeper slopes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".