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Scientists Discover Imprint of Flow Directions in Meandering Rivers

Nov 13, 2019

Meandering rivers are common, esthetically pleasing, and of engineering and ecological importance. The bends of alluvial meandering rivers often double back on themselves, showing skewing. This skewing may be directed upstream or downstream. How skewing evolves as bends develop remains poorly understood.  

Scientists from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign considered this issue using 20 reaches of nearly pristine alluvial meandering rivers in the world.   

Their analysis showed that low-amplitude bends tended to be downstream-skewed, while upstream skewing increasingly dominated as bend sinuosity increased. What's particularly interesting are the neck cutoffs. They might evolve directly from the bends of highest sinuosity, and 84% of them were upstream-skewed.   

The results suggest that rivers often carry an imprint of the direction of the flow that created them, through the shape of their high-amplitude bends and oxbow lakes  

"This study provides a new guide for interpreting bend evolution and a reference tool for estimating paleoflow direction on Earth and other planets," said Prof. CHEN Dong from IGSNRR.   

Their findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. 

 

A free meandering reach with its upstream and downstream skewing bends (the Chulym River, Russia) (Image by IGSNRR)   

Contact

ZHANG Yan

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research

E-mail:

Flow directionality of pristine meandering rivers is embedded in the skewing of high-amplitude bends and neck cutoffs

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