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The degree of meandering of the channel of a river, stream, or other watercourse is measured by its sinuosity. The sinuosity of a watercourse is the ratio of the length of the channel to the straight line down-valley distance. Streams or rivers with a single channel and sinuosities of 1.5 or more are defined as meandering streams or rivers. [1] [3]
1.50 ≤ SI: meandering It has been claimed that river shapes are governed by a self-organizing system that causes their average sinuosity (measured in terms of the source-to-mouth distance, not channel length) to be π , [ 3 ] but this has not been borne out by later studies, which found an average value less than 2.
Braided rivers, which form in (tectonically active) areas that have a larger sedimentary load than the discharge of the river and a high gradient. Meandering rivers, which form a sinuous path in a usually low-gradient plain toward the end of a fluvial system.
Animation of the formation of an oxbow lake. A meander cutoff is a natural form of a cutting or cut in a river occurs when a pronounced meander (hook) in a river is breached by a flow that connects the two closest parts of the hook to form a new channel, a full loop.
Point bar at a river meander: the Cirque de la Madeleine in the Gorges de l'Ardèche, France. Any fluid, including water in a stream, can only flow around a bend in vortex flow. [ 1 ] In vortex flow the speed of the fluid is fastest where the radius of the flow is smallest, and slowest where the radius is greatest.
Here, at the deepest and fastest part of the stream is the cut bank, the area of a meandering river channel that continuously undergoes erosion. [4] The faster the water in a river channel, the better it is able to pick up greater amounts of sediment, and larger pieces of sediment, which increases the river's bed load. [4]
In geomorphology a river is said to be rejuvenated when it is eroding the landscape in response to a lowering of its base level. The process is often a result of a sudden fall in sea level or the rise of land. The disturbance enables a rise in the river's gravitational potential energy change per unit distance, increasing its riverbed erosion rate.
River channel migration is the geomorphological process that involves the lateral migration of an alluvial river channel across its floodplain. This process is mainly driven by the combination of bank erosion of and point bar deposition over time. When referring to river channel migration, it is typically in reference to meandering streams.