BANKS EROSION

Banks erosion appears to be a fundamental process to understand behaviors of alluvial rivers. The ratio of banks erosion to bed erosion decides on the stream morphology and its evolution. Bank erosion can be highly dynamics in braided streams as it is shown in this movie, taken on the torrent de St Pierre, Massif des Ecrins (French Alps): It is only 5 minutes long...

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AND ALLUVIAL TERRACES

Bed topography of our experimental flows shows that, at a given value of the effective stream power, predominant erosion shifts from banks to bed, traducing an intermittent process. The channel initially widening, looses its capacity to erode the banks because of the decreasing water depth. It then cuts the bed vertically, giving birth to a terrace level. The new channel widens as well, but the lose of stream power due to the decreasing slope prevents it from reaching the previous maximum width and destroying the terrace. In these experimental eroding runs performed under constant hydrological conditions, the generation of terrace levels is an autogenic process that results from the relaxation of the slope.

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Back to fluvial processes
Modeling rivers
Braided pattern
Bedload transport
Banks erosion and alluvial terraces
 
 

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