Hydrologic Study of LSU Burden Gardens

I worked with a team of 4 to study the northwest corner of LSU Burden Gardens to figure out how the water was moving through the system. The northwest corner is borrow pits used to build the I-10 interstate taken from wetlands next to Ward Creek. It regularly floods when there is a rain event to protect the land nearby, but trash was getting stuck in this area. We were tasked with studying how the water moved through this area to better understand how to prevent trash from collecting. My responsibility in this project was to create a HEC-RAS model of the area by updating the topography of the model by using updated bathometry data along with refining the mesh of a previous year's HEC-RAS model's geometry layer.

This project was part of CE 4260: Designs of Hydrologic Systems under Dr. Clint Willson. Our results are shown in the PowerPoint below along with the report we turned in. Click on them to learn more.

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Here's one of the rain events that I modeled in HEC-RAS. This rain event was 7.5 inches. The model shows how the barrow pits fill up back to front and then drain the back last. They also show how Ward Creek and inflow from the neighborhoods above the barrow pits interact with one another in this hydrologic system. Click to play the video.