Controlling Factors on Water and Sediment Partitioning at Deltaic Bifurcations

Abstract Bifurcations in river‐dominated deltas are the main actors in the routing of water and sediments throughout the fluvial network. In spite of previous acknowledgments of their importance, we still lack a comprehensive framework on how bifurcation geometry affects water and sediment partitioning. To investigate this issue, we first combine previously calibrated 2D hydrodynamic simulations on the Wax Lake Delta with a Lagrangian particle‐tracking model, quantifying the partitioning of water and sediments with different buoyancy at five bifurcations and their correlations with differences in channel width, branching angle and inlet bed elevation between the downstream branches. We compare the sediment partitioning at bifurcations with available field data to validate our methodology. We then employ the same modeling tools on a simplified geometry, whose geometrical and hydraulic features resemble those of the bifurcations in the Wax Lake Delta. Model results show that the branching angle does not affect the partitioning of water and sediments. The combined effect of asymmetries in the channel width and inlet bed elevation is captured by a simple linear formula that accurately estimates the partitioning of water at bifurcations returned by the 2D calibrated hydrodynamic simulations. Our results also highlight the key role played by transverse gradients in the bathymetry of the upstream channel in determining the partitioning of sediments, suggesting that deeper portions of the cross‐section of the upstream channel can cause a proportionately larger fraction of sediments with a larger Rouse number to be routed toward the corresponding bifurcate.