Meander cutoff and the controls on the production of oxbow lakes

Constantine, José Antonio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0243-3662 and Dunne, Thomas 2008. Meander cutoff and the controls on the production of oxbow lakes. Geology 36 (1) , pp. 23-26. 10.1130/G24130A.1

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Abstract

Using satellite images archived by Google Earth™, we measured channel and oxbow-lake characteristics of 30 large meandering rivers to identify the controls on the production of oxbow lakes by meander cutoff. Cutoff produced lognormal distributions of lake lengths within the studied reaches, and the geometric mean lake length of each population correlated positively and exponentially with sinuosity, due to more highly sinuous reaches being comprised of longer meanders and to cutoff removing longer segments of more sinuous channels. We successfully predicted the size-frequency distributions of lakes stored within the flood-plains of five freely meandering reaches using only channel sinuosity and an assumption of the variance about the geometric mean lake length, a variable that did not significantly vary between the studied reaches. While the river's sinuosity remains steady, the temporal rate of cutoff can be estimated using channel sinuosity, the fraction by which cutoff reduces channel length, and the rate at which the reach lengthens by meander growth.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QE Geology
Uncontrolled Keywords:	oxbow lakes; meander; floodplains; sinuosity; meandering
Publisher:	Geological Society of America
ISSN:	0091-7613
Last Modified:	18 Oct 2022 12:40
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/10919

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