Articles | Volume 14, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-14-175-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-14-175-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
New outdoor experimental river facility to study river dynamics
Basem M. M. Mahmoud
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Département de génie civil et de génie du bâtiment, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Blvd. de l’Université, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
Emily Dickson
Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, QC, Canada
André Renault
Département de génie civil et de génie du bâtiment, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Blvd. de l’Université, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
Mélanie Trudel
Département de génie civil et de génie du bâtiment, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Blvd. de l’Université, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
Pascale M. Biron
Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, QC, Canada
Leonard S. Sklar
Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, QC, Canada
Jay Lacey
Département de génie civil et de génie du bâtiment, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Blvd. de l’Université, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
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Preprint under review for ESSD
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We present a new public collection of water level and wave measurements from the St. Lawrence Estuary and Saguenay Fjord in Canada, gathered using state-of-the-art instruments and the largest network ever deployed in this region. Collected to assess the accuracy of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite, these data will help scientists, decision-makers, and communities better study floods and coastal changes in estuaries, especially as the climate shifts and water levels rise.
Amal Mzoughi, Mélanie Trudel, Pascale Biron, Guénolé Choné, and Gabriela Llanet Siles
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5449, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5449, 2025
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This study demonstrates that the SWOT satellite can accurately monitor floods even in small rivers previously considered too narrow to observe from space. Using a major 2023 flood in Quebec, we compared the satellite’s WSE data with hydraulic simulations and ground measurements. The results show strong agreement, highlighting the potential of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite for improving flood modelling and risk management in poorly monitored regions.
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Calibrating hydrological models with multi-objective functions enhances model robustness. By using spatially distributed snow information in the calibration, the model performance can be enhanced without compromising the outputs. In this study the HYDROTEL model was calibrated in seven different experiments, incorporating the SPAEF (spatial efficiency) metric alongside Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and root-mean-square error (RMSE), with the aim of identifying the optimal calibration strategy.
Joseph P. Verdian, Leonard S. Sklar, Clifford S. Riebe, and Jeffrey R. Moore
Earth Surf. Dynam., 9, 1073–1090, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-1073-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-1073-2021, 2021
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River behavior depends on the size of rocks they carry. Rocks are born on hillslopes where erosion removes fragments from solid bedrock. To understand what controls the size of rock fragments, we measured the spacing between cracks exposed in 15 bare-rock cliffs and the size of rocks on the ground below. We found that, for each site, the average rock size could be predicted from the average distance between cracks, which varied with rock type. This shows how rock type can influence rivers.
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Short summary
Herein, we introduce a new large outdoor river research facility to study how rivers change shape at near-real scales. Initial experiments on a straight channel resulted in little bank erosion even when the flow was perturbed by the placement of an in-channel artificial bar/pool. The results point to a narrow operational window for bar growth and bank mobility which informs on the initial conditions of future bank erosion experiments.
Herein, we introduce a new large outdoor river research facility to study how rivers change...