Ice jams in a small river and the HEC-RAS modeling

This paper describes a model of a 3.06 km long river reach between two small reservoirs under both open flow and ice covering conditions for different operational settings of the stoplogs in the downstream reservoir. The HEC-RAS model developed by the Hydrological Engineering Center of US Army Corps of Engineers was used to compare different approaches in terms of flow velocity, water level and the Froude number. The impacts of heavily vegetated main channel and floodplain on ice accumulations were investigated. And it is shown that this vegetation plays a significant role in the formation of river ice jam during winter period and thus the vegetated channel has strong influence on ice flooding. In addition, the paper explores the impact both of the operation of the stoplogs during the winter period and the presence of the downstream dam on the accumulation of ice jam along this river reach.