A Shallow Water Model for Hydrodynamic Processes on Vegetated Hillslope. Water Flow Modulus

TL;DR

This paper develops a PDE-based shallow water model incorporating vegetation effects to simulate hydrodynamic processes on vegetated hillslopes, validated through numerical experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel PDE model that accounts for vegetation porosity in hillslope water flow simulations, combining fluid mechanics principles with finite volume discretization.

Findings

Model captures vegetation influence on water flow dynamics

Numerical validation confirms model's physical relevance

Provides a basis for further hydrological studies on vegetated slopes

Abstract

The hillslope hydrological processes are very important in watershed hydrology research. In this paper we focus on the water flow over the soil surface with vegetation in a hydrographic basin. We introduce a PDE model based on general principles of fluid mechanics where the unknowns are water depth and water velocity. The influence of the plant cover to the water dynamics is given by porosity (a quantity related to the density of the vegetation), which is a function defined over the hydrological basin. Using finite volume method for approximating the spatial derivatives, we build an ODE system which constitutes the base of the discrete model we will work with. We discuss and investigate several physical relevant properties of this model. Finally, we use numerical results to validate the model.