Quantifying the Delivery & Dispersal of Landslide-Derived Sediment to the Dart River, New Zealand

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Following heavy rainfall on the 4/1/14, a major debris flow at Slip Stream (44.59 S 168.34 E) introduced >10^6 m^3 of sediment to the Dart River valley floor in NZ Southern Alps (S. Cox, pers. comm). Runout over the existing fan dammed the Dart River causing a sudden drop in discharge downstream. This broad dam was breached quickly, however the loss of conveyance has since impounded a 4 x 1 km lake with depths that exceed 20 m. This event presents a rare and unprecedented opportunity to study the impacts of a discrete, high magnitude 'sediment pulse', remarkable in its capacity to dam a large river in flood (peak discharge during the event was recorded at ~790 m^3/s). Quantifying the impact of this disturbance on the form and stability of the receiving body, the Dart River, will advance our understanding of how such low frequency geophysical events shape the evolution of large alpine rivers and will create a vital baseline for future research that seeks to test theories of how such large bed wave propagates and disperse sediment downstream. The impact of this pulse also elevates the risks posed by natural hazards in the region. Enhanced sediment transport has the potential to raise riverbed levels, destabilise floodplain assets, reduce standards of flood protection, increase the risk of channel avulsion and impact on freshwater and riparian ecology with a legacy that long outlasts the initial disturbance. Locally, this event may result in rapid advance of the Dart-Rees delta into Lake Wakatipu threatening the lakeshore communities of Glenorchy and Kinloch. The assessment of how large fluvial sediment pulses migrate, disperse and condition such hazards will offer key insights that may be transferable to other dynamic alpine settings. However, in order to constrain this event effectively, an initial topographic and sedimentological survey must be undertaken urgently, in the immediate aftermath of the event, to enable robust quantification of the sediment pulse and the existing channel morphology. This research aims to advance this goal by seeking to: develop a unique baseline dataset that will be used to quantify the delivery and dispersal of sediment inputs from the Slip Stream landslide, from its source at Te Koroka to its sedimentary sink in Lake Wakatipu. Using a combination of aerial, terrestrial and bathymetric surveying, we will acquire two synoptic, system-wide snapshots of this highly charged sediment cascade that record the 3d morphology and sedimentology of the interlinked components of the sediment transfer system. Surveys will be undertaken in April 2014 and then one year later in March 2015, following the annual summer floods that dominate fluvial sediment transport in the region. The first survey will establish the initial state of the system and so create the opportunity to quantify the downstream pattern of sediment storage and transport through comparison with the second and any subsequent re-surveys direct differencing of Digital Elevation Models. The simultaneous bathymetric surveys of the upstream impounded lake and the delta morphology will provide constraints on sediment flux across the boundaries of the study area, enabling closure of the coarse sediment budget. The combined results of these two survey campaigns will create an unparalleled dataset to help frame and test hypotheses that seek to explain the dispersal of major sediment pulses within rivers.