DIY Geomorph Model

Hi folks, yesterday I was finally able to get to a project I've had sitting in my garage since early this fall At the AFS meeting in September, a fella named Steve from Little River Research and Design (http://www.emriver.com/) had his Em4 model setup, I had to have one. There's so many things about native fish and mussel habitat that you can teach with these models. The powers that be right now don't favor me getting one, so I had to settle for making my own until I have my own position and budgets. If you have budget (or not, he might have ways), wow, totally talk to Steve. The models and most particularly, the SUBSTRATE that he uses are worth every single penny.

So, this is my knock off... Total cost was about $250, about $100 of that was the substrate and I'm using a $60 pump which probably isn't necessary, I just had it already. I do like the extra pressure it gives me tho, because the system is really responsive when I cut it back on at the ball valve.

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This is the whole kit n kaboodle, sump and plumbing.

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My good old friend Quickcrete play sand.

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CarribSea Cichlid Mix to give different colors and densities... This is where the $$ came in for the substrate cost, but it's totally worth it.

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We have lots of glacial drift in this area, so I used different sizes of pea gravel to simulate granitic cobbles.

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You can see point bars forming of the black and white, followed by the more dense quartz sand, and it all sorting away from the gravel.

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Here you can see it migrating downstream.

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And here's what happened after I "mined" some gravel.

Still working some bugs out. I'm going to try it with different sized feeder pipes and going to get some caps so I can cut back on the "spring-like" attributes, although it's pretty cool to watch the sand percolate up, just like you'd see in a stream where there's heavy glacial drift.

I can get into more specifics if people are interested. I plan to write this up for AC.

Todd

Is that new insulation in the sun room???

Looks good. When I was in graduate school at UMass/Boston, a faculty member's lab was mostly this big circular water track made of plexiglass about 5 m across and almost knee deep. He primarily used it to calculate the entrainment of food particles and benthic worm poop in a near-shore marine environment. It fascinated visiting high school students in particular.

I'll have to show you something similar we built a few years ago that I think is a just as good as Little River's. It was very cheap too because it was made out of highway sign material (free aluminum is awesome!). The whole thing was sprayed with Rhino-liner to make it water tight and rolls on boat tounge jacks. Not only can we do the hydrology demos, but we hooked up a spray bar system to simulate rainfall events, impervious surfaces, etc.

That looks awesome, where'd ya get that Cichlid Mix stuff? How much does it cost?

Jim, yes the back room is now down to dry wall, floor and finish work. I'll be so glad when that is out of the way!

Bruce, yeap, high schoolers are my target audience for this thing, although I think adults have some things to learn from it as well. I wish it was long enough to get another s-curve out of it so I could really show headward erosion and wetland draining, but I think they'll get the idea. I'm going to play with some different types of injectors too, see if I can create 2 headwater streams that converge, for example.

I also like Matt's idea for rain. I'd really like to see what you did with that Matt.

CH, thanks! I got the cichlid sand at the local fish store. If your local shop doesn't carry it, they can probably get it in or you can buy it online. It ain't cheap tho, I'll warn you. But it really does a nice job of sorting, since it's a completely different density than the quartz sand. A local building supply brought us sand once that had lots of little granitic pebbles too. You might look for something like that. When I move my gardens (where we have it), I make steal some of the sand and incorporate it. The more you mix in, the cooler it gets.

Todd

For a cheap lightweight material you could use Schultz aquatic plant soil (aka Turf-Face), which is basically just fired clay gravel. The particles are approx 1/8 inch. But it might be too light and easily carried.

Oh oh oh that might make some really nice "boulders"! Thanks for suggesting it Gerald, I have a half bag in the garage that I kept for a rainy day

Todd

Oh oh oh that might make some really nice "boulders"! Thanks for suggesting it Gerald, I have a half bag in the garage that I kept for a rainy day

Todd

Good stuff Todd! I actually got a quote for the EM2 we saw in Nashville. The quote is at work but I think it was in the $4-5K range. As far as teaching opportunities, your model will do the same. Great work.

Thanks Scott! We're running it for the first time in class tomorrow. I'll try and take a bunch of pictures.

Todd