MEANDERING OF RIVERS

Procedural generation of meandering rivers inspired by erosion

This paper describes a method of procedural generation of meandering rivers inspired by erosion, which can enhance visual realism of virtual terrains. Terrain is represented using an adaptively subdivided triangle mesh with additional information (e.g. amount of soft deposit) stored in vertices. Water is simulated using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), modified in order to model erosion o...

Internal connectivity of meandering rivers: Statistical generalization of channel hydraulic geometry

The geometry of rivers has been characterized in terms of downstream and at-a-station hydraulic geometry, based on individual cross sections. Such analyses do not, however, provide insight as to how these cross sections are connected. We generalize the concept of hydraulic geometry, using data on bathymetry from four reaches of meandering rivers that include at least five bends. We quantify con...

Reverse Meanders, Pseudo Point Bars, and the Enigma of Meandering in Braided Rivers

Bifurcation dynamics and avulsion duration in meandering rivers by one-dimensional and three-dimensional models

[1] At river bifurcations, water and sediment are divided over two branches. The dynamics of the bifurcation determine the long-term evolution (centuries) of the downstream branches, potentially leading to avulsion, but the dynamics are poorly understood. The long-term evolution can only be studied by one-dimensional models because of computational costs. For such models, a relation describing ...

Experimental evidence for the conditions necessary to sustain meandering in coarse-bedded rivers.

Meandering rivers are common on Earth and other planetary surfaces, yet the conditions necessary to maintain meandering channels are unclear. As a consequence, self-maintaining meandering channels with cutoffs have not been reproduced in the laboratory. Such experimental channels are needed to explore mechanisms controlling migration rate, sinuosity, floodplain formation, and planform morphodyn...