Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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]
A wide variety of river and stream channel types exist in limnology, the study of inland waters.All these can be divided into two groups by using the water-flow gradient as either low gradient channels for streams or rivers with less than two percent (2%) flow gradient, or high gradient channels for those with greater than a 2% gradient.
Due to the circular path of a stream around a bend the surface of the water is slightly higher near the concave bank (the bank with the larger radius) than near the convex bank. This slight slope on the water surface of the stream causes a slightly greater water pressure on the floor of the stream near the concave bank than near the convex bank.
A stream with cohesive banks that are resistant to erosion will form narrow, deep, meandering channels, whereas a stream with highly erodible banks will form wide, shallow channels, preventing the helical flow of the water necessary for meandering and resulting in the formation of braided channels.
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.
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]
A stream is a continuous body of surface water [1] flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may ...
The sinuosity index can be explained, then, as the deviations from a path defined by the direction of maximum downslope. For this reason, bedrock streams that flow directly downslope have a sinuosity index of 1, and meandering streams have a sinuosity index that is greater than 1. [2]