Manning’s roughness coefficient for the Doce River

ABSTRACT The Manning’s roughness coefficient is used for various hydraulic modeling. However, the decision on what value to adopt is a complex task, especially when dealing with natural water courses due to the various factors that affect this coefficient. For this reason, most of the studies carried out on the subject adopt a local approach, such as this proposal for the Doce River. Due to the regional importance of this river in Brazil, the objective of this article was to estimate the roughness coefficient of Manning along the river, in order to aid in hydraulic simulations, as well as to discuss the uncertainties and variations associated with this value. For this purpose, information on flow rates and water depths were collected at river flow stations along the river. With this information, the coefficients were calculated using the Manning equation, using the software Canal, and their space-time variations were observed. In addition, it was observed that the uncertainties in flow and depth measurements affect the value of the Manning coefficient in the case studied.