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On 7 March 1876 a cutoff formed suddenly across the neck of a meander, known as the "Devil's Elbow", in the Mississippi River near Reverie, Tennessee, shortening the river's course and leaving the town connected to Arkansas, but across the new river channel from the rest of Tennessee.
An example of a minor avulsion is known as a meander cutoff, 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. This occurs when the ratio between the channel slope and the potential slope after an avulsion is less than about 1/5.
Aerial views of the Reverie area with superimposed state borders illustrate the course of the Mississippi River in this area before and after the 1876 avulsion. The state line is following the pre-cutoff riverbed as of 1795. In 2007, the Mississippi River was located about 3.5 miles (5,6 km) southeast of the Tennessee/Arkansas state border near ...
An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. The word "oxbow" can also refer to a U-shaped bend in a river or stream, whether or not it is cut off from the main stream. [1] [2] It takes its name from an oxbow which is part of a harness for oxen to pull a ...
[18] [19] Researchers using aerial photographs and historical maps have identified many of these palaeochannel features, a well-documented example being the meander cutoff at Sawley. [ 20 ] [ 21 ] The river's propensity to change course is referred to in Shakespeare 's play Henry IV, Part 1 :
However, in 1876, a Mississippi River flood cut off the large meander next to Vicksburg through the De Soto Point, which changed the Mississippi River's course away from the city. Vicksburg only retained access to an oxbow lake formed from the old channel of the river, which effectively isolated the city from accessing the Mississippi riverfront.
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.
When the original channel is cut off from the new channel by the deposition of sediments, oxbow lakes are formed. [3] Channel migration is important to sustaining diverse aquatic and riparian habitats [4] The migration causes sediments and woody debris to enter the river, and creates areas of new floodplain on the inside of the meander. [4]