Flow and sediment transport in vegetated waterways: a review

One of the most important waterway components is vegetation, which play a pivotal role in the flow and sediment transport. Vegetation environment and characteristics, including vegetation porosity or density, shape, flexibility and vegetation height, are significantly affected in vegetated channels. Various vegetation positions and arrangements such as patches significantly affect the sediment deposition rate and flow turbulence. This paper reviews recent works conducted on vegetated open channels, which include the effect of different vegetation arrangements and vegetation characteristics on mass transport and turbulence structure. Studies based on laboratory, field works, and modeling, have been reviewed based on previous methods used by different researchers. Methods used in vegetation porosity evaluation, rate of flow and sediment transport properties are presented. In short, flow and transport depend on the vegetation properties and flow structure conditions.