Over time, meanders become larger and more visible.Įventually meanders turn into oxbow lakes when two outside bends erode together making a shorter route for the water. Established analytical models of river evolution with increasing sinuosity generate river planimetry with statistical properties equivalent to real-world meanders Camporeale et al., 2005 Ikeda et al., 1981 Johannesson and Parker, 1989 Sun et al., 1996, where sinuosity is the quotient of river distance and valley distance. The slower water drops sediment.Ĭontinuous erosion on the outer bank and deposition on the inner bank will expand the bend in the river. The river flows more slowly on the inside of the river beach. The river flows faster on the outside of a curve, and the fast water erodes the outside bends of a river channel by hydraulic action and abrasion. The maps produced by Fisk (1944) are the basis for reconstruction of 16 stages of Mississippi River migration. There are areas of slower and faster water movement. Further downstream in the Mississippi River Valley, we employed the methods and results of Fisk (1944) to reconstruct channel migration patterns at Helena, Arkansas. Meanders were named for a river in Anatolia.Ī river rarely flows in a straight line: it bends around because it drops sediment where it flows most slowly. The position of the curves changes over time. Meanders form a snake-like pattern as the river flows across a fairly flat valley floor.
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