Sediment load determines the shape of rivers.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how rivers adjust to the sediment load they carry is critical to predicting the evolution of landscapes. Presently, however, no physically based model reliably captures the dependence of basic river properties, such as its shape or slope, on the discharge of sediment, even in the simple case of laboratory rivers. Here, we show how the balance between fluid stress and gravity acting on the sediment grains, along with cross-stream diffusion of sediment, determines the shape and sediment flux profile of laminar laboratory rivers that carry sediment as bedload. Using this model, which reliably reproduces the experiments without any tuning, we confirm the hypothesis, originally proposed by Parker [G. Parker, J. Fluid Mech 89, 127-146 (1978)], that rivers are restricted to e

SUBMITTER: Popovic P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8670519 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature