Data for: Multiscale bedform reorganization at the onset of substantial suspended sediment transport

Sand-bedded rivers feature dunes and ripples, collectively referred to as bedforms, that regulate flow resistance and sediment fluxes. Recent research has demonstrated that in large lowland rivers, bedforms are characterized by their multiscale organization; however, the flow and sediment transport conditions under which these arrangements are stable remain unknown. In this study, we analyzed twelve flume experiments of bedform evolution to reveal a previously unrecognized transition in the organization of multiscale bedforms.

The data herein accompany the manuscript “Multiscale bedform reorganization at the onset of substantial suspended sediment transport ” by Debsmita Das, Vamsi Ganti, and Robert C. Mahon. This dataset consists of bathymetric data from four flume experiments of bedform evolution conducted in a 15m-long, 2-m-wide, and 1-m-deep flume at the Experimental Sedimentology Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara. This includes a 20-hour-long step-discharge experiment, systematically increasing the discharge from 0.28 m3/s to 0.41 m3/s in ten increments, then decreasing it back to 0.28 m3/s in ten steps. The initial and peak discharges represented bedload-dominated and suspension-dominated conditions, respectively. We also include three steady-state experiments at 0.28 m3/s (baseflow; duration ~6.6 hrs), 0.41 m3/s (peak-flow; 3 hrs), and 0.37 m3/s (intermediate flow; ~8 hrs) to characterize equilibrium bedform dynamics. The vertical and horizontal resolution of all experimental data is 1 mm, and the temporal resolution of scans is 4 minutes.