Sediment Transport and Process of Sedimentation

Sediment transport is the phenomenon of movement of solid particles primarily due to movement of the fluid in which the sediment is entrained and force of gravity acting on the sediment. The fluid can be air, water, ice or volcanic fluid. Understanding of the engineering and ecological aspects from sources to final settlement of the phenomenon is becoming more and more important for many reasons, some of them includes

• Analyzing the after effects of dam flushing and ecological response to this in downstream dams and connected sea.
• Devising dam’s optimal operational routine to minimize sediment accumulation in the reservoir, which reduces the storage capacity
• Creation of more realistic and useful models to understand what would happens under a certain set of conditions or changes at a specific place
• Finding environmental reasons of increased dust storms and desertification in some areas of world

Sediment transport due to water motion occurs in rivers, the oceans, lakes, seas, and other water bodies. Process of settling down of carried sediments normally due to low velocity of water is called sedimentation. The magnitude of problem can be assessed by the fact that total storage capacity of all dams on earth today is about 6000 Km3 (according to WWF)and  Prof. K. Mehmood estimated in 1986 that average loss of storage annually due to sedimentation is about 50 Km3. This makes about slightly less than 1 % annual storage loss. During my master thesis, which was about modeling sediment transport on Tenryu River, upstream of Sakuma Dam, I spent some time on thinking about solution of sedimentation. As if we can be able to resolve it, we will not only get upfront saving when we spend millions on sediment removal every year, but will also have reliable long-term storage capacity.
There are various techniques developed to compensate the problem somehow including dam flushing, dredging, controlling sediment inflow from source etc. I personally think that there is no match of ' control from source' but at the same time it requires highly skillful planning and coordination between many stakeholder making it more challenging. Some other quick solutions of sedimentation problems came in my mind but since for now these are only pop-thoughts, scientific evidences needs to establish before digging further.

1. Exploiting chemical properties of sediments...

That is, at least theoretically, to make such an environment in which
Incoming sediments would change their chemical composition and dissolve into water which would prevent there settling
Incoming sediments breakdown and become so thin that all or most of incoming sediments become wash load and pass through dam without settling.

2. Artificial ecological system...

At least theoretically, a system can be produced in which there could some living organism, which would eat, and digest incoming sediments and their raw material produced is unsettle-able. I have read somewhere that there are planktonic animals eating floating debris in Lake Baikal, which help it to maintain its clarity. So these planktonic can be genetically researched to absorb or eat more debris or and sediments to make deposited sediments to a low level.

3. Use of Nano Technology .....

This would in principle works similar to Ecological system. That is, desirable amount of self-sustained nano robots can be spread in problematic water bodies where these nano robots would break down sediments either chemically or physically so that these become almost permanently suspended/well mixed.

As I already mentioned these are merely  pop-thoughts and so far non scientific. However I am sharing them just to have a second opinion about them. Or may be you just have a comment about what you think or know if somebody somewhere is working on similar things.