Dunston Beck river survey.

gloves were used to collect the bed load particles from theriverbeds.  Although my hands were covered the water still managed to seepin.  They were mostly used for hygiene purposes, as you never know what youcan dredge up from the riverbed.Meter RuleThe meter rule was light and easy to transport from station to station.  Weused it for measuring the depth and the velocity of the surface water.StopwatchThe stopwatch enabled us to time how long the orange peel took to travelfive meters.  This enabled us to find the velocity of the surface water.Measuring TapeOur group used a recoil measuring tape, as it was small and easy to carry.Also it was fast at being recalled and this gave us extra time to spend onour other methods.  We used it to measure width and wetted perimeter as wellas the particle size.A Description Of The Methods Used To Collect The Data.Surface Width.Equipment: Tape measureWe measured the surface width by using a tape measure.  This was to findout the width along the beck at the different positions we measured. Oneperson stood on the left side of the river and one person stood on the rightside of the river.  Both of them held the tape measure at the edge of thebanks and measured the distance across the river.  I recorded the reading onmy record sheet.  The diagram below shows how my group measured the surfacewidth.Average Depth.Equipment: Tape measure, meter ruleOur group worked out the average depth of Dunston Beck.  This was donebecause we didn't trust the river because it could be deeper in one placeand shallower in another place.  We worked the average depth out bymeasuring across the beck.  The depth was taken every 30cm across the beckand the tape measure was placed across the beck tightly so that the 30cmintervals would be accurate.  At each position the meter rule was putvertically into the water until it met the bed.  Sometimes the meter rulersank into the riverbed and so we had to get it out of the bed and try and doit again.  We did it again because we didn't think it was a fair test.  Ithen took the readings, which were then recorded onto a recording sheet.Here is a diagram showing how my group measured the depth.Wetted Perimeter.Equipment: Tape measureTwo people out of my group holding a tape measure at the right and leftsides of the river measured the wetted perimeter.  Then the tape measure wasstretched from one side of the river to the other.  It was laid across thecontours of the bed.  This wasn't a very good job to do and luckily I wasthe recorder.  The tape measure had to be pushed down onto the bottom of thebed and my friends weren't very happy because they got very wet indeed. Thereading was recorded onto the recording sheet, which is shown in theAppendix.  Here is a diagram below showing how my group measured the wettedperimeter.Bed Load.Equipment: Meter rulerTo calculate this I went into the stream and picked up ten particles in theright, middle and left parts of the beck.  This was randomly done.  I didthis by bending down, closing my eyes and putting my hand into the river andpicking up anything that I felt was solid.  It was a very wet and disgustingjob as sometimes there wasn't anything there apart from silt.  As I didn'tmeasure the wetted perimeter I was nominated to do this job. As I pickedeach of the thirty particles out of the beck they were measured with a rulerand then recorded onto the recording sheet on page.  We then together as agroup took the average of the thirty particles to make the calculation moreaccurate.  Here is a diagram below showing how we got the bed loadcalculation.Speed.Equipment: Orange peel, stopwatch, and tape measureWe measured a distance of 5 meters along the stream.  Then a piece oforange peel was dropped into the water at the start of the 5-meter point.  Astopwatch was started once the orange peel had been placed in the water andthe stopwatch was stopped when it reached the distance of 5 meters.  Thiswas repeated another 2 times so that it would be more accurate.  We did thisexperiment on the left, middle and right side of the Beck.  We did it in thethree positions across the stream because we felt that it would be anaccurate result if we did so.  We chose to use the orange peel as it wasable to float on the water, it wouldn't break up and dissolve and it waseasy to see because it just floated on underneath the surface of the water.Sometimes the orange peel got stuck in vegetation.  Although the temptationwas to kick it and help it along, we thought that we would disqualify itfrom our results because it wasn't a fair test.  We repeated the experimentuntil it didn't get stuck in the vegetation.Here is a diagram below showing how we measured the speed of the river flowalong the beck.Description of Measurement Locations.We decided to measure location two, six and nine.  Below is a briefdescription of each location that we measured.Location Two.Once we had arrived at Dunston Beck we decided that we would start at thefurthest location away from the gate and work our way down stream as wewent.  When we looked around the surrounding area we observed these things.There seemed to be a substantial amount of vegetation on the both banks.  Onthe left hand bank there was a steep incline belonging to the railway.There also seemed to be signs of slumping.  There were also overhangingtrees on the left-hand bank and on the right hand bank it was fairly muddy.The water was very deep in this area and a problem occurred because ourwellingtons were overflowing with water.  Other than this everything wentwell.Location 2Location Six.We moved down the stream to location six.  It is located just before atributary.  It is well sheltered on the left and right hand banks.  Thereare glades of trees.  It was relatively shallow with its deepest sectiononly being ten centimetres deep.  There were no obstructions in the channel.The wetted perimeter was larger than station two's.  In fact it was 1.4meters deeper, although the average bed load calibre was smaller.Everything went well and our wellingtons were not overflowing with water,which was a relief.Location 6Location Nine.We then moved further down the stream again to location nine.  There was asubstantial amount of vegetation in this area.  The water was even deeperthan at location two's.  In fact the average depth was 27.91 meters.  Ourwellingtons were certainly overflowing with water at this location.  Theaverage bed load calibre was equal to location two's.  The right andleft-hand banks were steep and very muddy.  There were small trees growingon the left-hand side bank.  Everything went well at this location apartfrom our feet getting saturated.Location 9Hypothesis 1.Hypothesis.The Speed Of The River Is Slower In Areas Of Vegetation.Reasoning:I expected the speed of the river to be slower in areas of vegetation.  Myreasoning for this is because if any material that is moving forward andsomething impedes its path it is obviously going to slow down.  For instancewhen a bullet is fired from a gun it will fly through the air at atremendous speed but if a sandbag is placed in its way it is stopped and thebullets speed is cut drastically due to the atmosphere.  It is also the sameas light, once a ray of light enters a new atmosphere such as water it slowsdown and bends as each part enters.Testing:The method I decided to use to convey my results was a bar chart.  Withinthis bar chart would be three pairs of columns.  Each section would be thespeed at which the river was moving in that particular area of the river.One would be in an area of vegetation and the other would be where there wasno vegetation.  With this it will be easy for the reader to see the clearcomparison.Results:The bar chart showed that in the areas of the river where vegetation waspresent the speed of the river was slower to that of the section with novegetation, which had a faster speed.Conclusion:It is easy to see from both my reasoning and the bar chart that in areas ofvegetation the speed of the river was slower than in areas with novegetation present.  The stations that were used in this result were chosenjust by general selection.  I chose half of them, which had littlevegetation, and half that had lots of vegetation.  The whole experiment wasreally common sense but it had to be proved or else it would have just beenan opinion.  The speed of the river is slower in areas of vegetation is truebecause my results have proved it.Hypothesis 2.Hypothesis.The Greater The Velocity The Smaller The Particle Size.Reasoning:I expected that the greater the velocity the smaller the particle sizewould be true.  To reinforce my prediction I looked at my notes on thecharacteristics of a river.  Under this heading was an entire section on howa river carries its load.  There are in fact three ways in which a river cancarry its load:1. Traction     2. Suspension     3. Saltation     4. SolutionTractionTraction was the one that concerned me the most.  The meaning of tractionis as follows.  It is where large fragments contained within rivers flow aredragged along the bed by the current.SuspensionSuspension also concerned me as it backed up my hypothesis by showing whathappened at the other extreme.  It is where small particles like silt andclay are held in the water and pulled along by the water current.SaltationSand sized particles bounce along the riverbed in a leap frog movement.SolutionThe lightest of all the loads are the minerals.  The minerals are dissolvedby the water and carried along as part of the water.The diagram below shows how loads are transported down the river.Combining all four of these methods I felt strongly over the facts andthought the hypothesis would be true.  Just by taking each of the methodsyou can see that as the weight drops the particle can be carried.TestingThe method that I decided to use was the correlation tests.  The test Ipicked was the scattergraph with the line of best fit.  If the points wereall situated around the line then obviously there was a correlation betweenall the results.  The points used on the graph were collated using a datasummary chart we had produced earlier.ResultsThe scattergraph showed no correlation at all between the velocity of theriver and the size of the particles being carried.  This may be due to humanexperimental error.  I also produced a Spearman rank chart and that showedno correlation as well.ConclusionI accept that in my hypothesis, that the velocity of the river is greaterwhen the particle size is smaller is wrong because of the graphs and chartsthat I have produced prove that this is not so.  They show no correlation atall because the results vary a lot.  The result that was collected fromlocation seven was unlike the other results from the other nine stations.This worried me slightly and I think that if I had repeated my results thenthe hypothesis probably would have been true because I think that theresults that I collected were dubious.  Also by using my notes and thedefinitions of the various ways in which a river can carry its load makes meeven more suspicious of the results.  So the results that I collected provedthat the hypothesis was wrong.  I also did a Spearman rank chart and thisdidn't indicate any correlation between velocity and particle size at all.So the results that I collected proved that my hypothesis was wrong.Spearman’s Rank Chart To Show the Correlation between the Velocity and TheAverage Particle Size.Station Velocity X Rank Particle Size Y Rank d d*d1 0.05 9 4.71 3 6 362 0.062 7 2.7 7 0 03 0.35 1 2.83 5 -4 164 0.207 3 2.58 9 -6 365 0.059 8 0 10 -2 46 0.08 6 2.65 8 -2 47 0.16 5 9.15 1 4 168 0.187 4 3.46 4 0 09 0.05 9 2.71 6 3 910 0.24 2 4.8 2 0 0                   Total 121Workingd x d = 121               6 x 121          726So R x R = 1- ---------   = 1- -----  = 1- 0.733 = 0.267                 1000 - 10       990This Spearman rank chart does not show a positive correlation between thevelocity and the average particle size.Hypothesis 3.Hypothesis.The Wider The River The Greater The Discharge.Reasoning :I expected that my hypothesis that stated that the wider the river thegreater the discharge would be true. I based this on facts from my geographybook.  It stated that Discharge = the amount of water passing a given pointeach second and this is a combination of its volume and velocity.  ThereforeI guaged that as the width of the river increased then in turn so would theamount of water able to pass the point in the same time.  Here are a fewbasic examples on my hypothesis.        4 Area 24 m2          4      6        4 Area = 48m2 4                                                                         12Testing:The method I used was to draw cross sections of various stations along withtheir discharge reading to show that the stations with the largest widthswould have the biggest discharges.  Also shown in a bar chart.  I used thecross sections to show the reader the different widths visually so that theywould be able to see the clear comparison.  However there was also the barchart to enforce this.Results:The cross sections and results accompanied by the data showed that I wascorrect and that my hypothesis was right.Conclusion:The cross sections show along with their readings that as their widthincreases the discharge does.  This along with the same cross section ofsmaller widths and their smaller readings show the connection.  Then theresults of the first test were converted to a bar chart for quick research.So the hypothesis the wider the river the greater the discharge is true andI have proven this with my results.APPENDIXCalculationsThroughout the river survey we needed to obtain facts and data.  We managedto convert the figures and results into a useful form by using the followingformula:1. The following formula finds the volume of the river at the point inquestion:Cross sectional area = Width x Average Depth2. This measures the efficiency of the river channel shape - the degree offriction holding back the water and the amount of unhindered water.  Thehigher the HR, the more efficient the channel.Hydraulic Radius (HR) = Cross sectional area                            ----------------------                                    Wetted Perimeter3. This formula is used to calculate the amount of water passing a givenpoint in a time period (cubic m /sec).Discharge = Cross sectional area x Average velocity (cubic m/sec)Four and five measure the energy of the river.4. Average Velocity = At surface = sum of surface readings                                  -------------------------                                   No. Of surface readings5. Average Particle size = Total length of particles                          ---------------------------                               No. Of particlesRiver Study DataSource Average bed load calibre Surface Width Wetted Perimeter Average DepthAverage Surface Velocity Cross Sectional Area Discharge HydraulicRadiuscm m m m sec/m m2 m3Location 1 4.71 4 5.5 0.23 0.05 0.92 0.046 0.1672Location 2 2.7 3.5 3.7 0.23 0.062 0.805 0.05 0.2175Location 3 2.83 2.85 2.2 0.05 0.35 0.14 0.05 0.0647Location 4 2.58 4.2 5.4 0.21 0.207 0.88 0.18 0.1522Location 5 Silt 4.6 5.2 0.31 0.059 1.42 0.08 0.2742Location 6 2.65 4.2 5.1 0.07 0.08 0.29 0.02 0.0576Location 7 9.15 5.7 6.3 0.16 0.16 0.91 0.15 0.1447Location 8 3.46 4.9 5.6 0.23 0.187 1.12 0.21 0.2012Location 9 2.7 3.6 5 0.27 0.05 0.792 0.04 0.1944Location 10 4.8 2.5 3.3 0.11 0.24 0.275 0.06 0.0833