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Lowland river sinuosity on Earth and Mars set by the pace of meandering and avulsion

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 747–753 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Meandering rivers have shaped the landscapes of Earth and Mars through the development of sinuous and migrating channels. River channel sinuosity reflects an interplay of primary agents including water discharge and sediment supply, information that is archived in the sedimentary record. Here we examine the spatial variability of the sinuosity of 21 lowland rivers on Earth and six ancient river systems on Mars using satellite imagery, and identify a dichotomy in spatial patterns: instead of decreasing downstream as previously suggested, we find that the sinuosity either increases or remains constant approaching the river outlet. We conduct numerical modelling of channel migration to show that these bimodal patterns can be explained as a competition between the timescale required for channels to establish steady-state sinuosity and the avulsion timescale. This highlights the role of varying water discharge on meander development and demonstrates how the planform morphology of modern and ancient fluvial systems may be used to interpret hydrological regimes of river systems, with implications for lowland river migration patterns under future shifting climate regimes.

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Fig. 1: Maps of meandering rivers and fluvial ridges and associated spatial variability in sinuosity.
Fig. 2: Spatial variability in the binned average sinuosity.
Fig. 3: Measured river sinuosity compared to model results.
Fig. 4: Channel migration rate, sediment supply and discharge properties for the investigated Earth rivers.

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Data availability

The compiled data on river paths for analysis of the sinuosity and lateral migration rate are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22308637.

Code availability

The MATLAB codes for plotting Figs. 2–4 are available for download from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7749850.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this project was provided by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017R1A6A1A07015374) to W.K., Yonsei University (Post-Doctoral Researcher Supporting Program, Yonsei University Research Fund #2021-12-0018) to C.W. and the Excellent Young Scientist Fund (Overseas, 2021) from NSFC to H.M.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth System Sciences, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Chenliang Wu, Wonsuck Kim & Ryan Herring

  2. Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Benjamin T. Cardenas

  3. School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA

    Tian Y. Dong

  4. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Hongbo Ma

  5. Key Laboratory of Hydroscience of the Ministry of Water Resources, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Hongbo Ma

  6. Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Hongbo Ma

  7. Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

    Andrew Moodie

  8. Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Jeffrey A. Nittrouer

  9. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Frank Tsai & An Li

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Contributions

C.W. and W.K. conceived the paper. C.W., B.T.C., R.H. and A.M. collected the data. All authors contributed to the analysis, writing, reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Wonsuck Kim.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Spatial trend in channel sinuosity Ω of variable-sinuosity Earth rivers.

Dots are sinuosity measurements of individual bends and the black solid lines are binned averages with a bin size of 0.1La, where La is the avulsion length.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Spatial trend in channel sinuosity Ω of constant-sinuosity Earth rivers.

Dots are sinuosity measurements of individual bends and the black solid lines are binned averages with a bin size of 0.1La, where La is the avulsion length.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Planform patterns of fluvial sandstone ridges of 6 Martian fluvial-deltaic systems (a-c and g-i) and their associated spatial trends in sinuosity Ω (d-f and j-l).

Dots are sinuosity measurements of individual bends and the black solid lines are binned averages with a bin size of 0.1La, where La is the avulsion length each marked by a dashed line. Projected distance PD of sinuosity measurements is normalized by La. Dashed line marks the avulsion location.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Historical images, maps and satellite images of the Brazos, Colorado, Indus, Trinity, and Mississippi rivers.

River centerlines were traced to calculate lateral channel migration rates. Credit: Brazos, Colorado and Trinity, Texas Natural Resources Information System; Indus, Landsat Copernicus via Google Earth; Mississippi and Lafourche, US Army Corps of Engineers.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Satellite images and associated river centerlines for the Neches, Sabine, Suwannee, Tombigbee, and Yana rivers.

Credit: Google Earth (third-party data providers are listed on the image).

Extended Data Fig. 6 Satellite images and associated river centerlines for the Alabama, Apalachicola, Don, Kobuk, and Mackenzie rivers.

Credit: Google Earth (third-party data providers are listed on the image).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Correlation between sediment supply and channel lateral migration rate.

Blue dots and green diamonds represent the average measured lateral migration rate for variable- and constant-sinuosity river groups, respectively. Error bar denotes the measured maximum and minimum lateral migration rate for the natural rivers. The black line represents the regression fit. Sample size for each data point corresponds to the number of migration rate measurements based on traced centerlines at different times (Extended Data Figs. 4–6).

Extended Data Table 1 Key model input parameters53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71 for natural rivers in Fig. 3
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Sediment (Qs) and water budget (Qw), discharge variability (DV), flood intensity (QI), and lateral migration rate (r*) for natural rivers72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Fig. 1, Table 1 and discussion.

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Wu, C., Kim, W., Herring, R. et al. Lowland river sinuosity on Earth and Mars set by the pace of meandering and avulsion. Nat. Geosci. 16, 747–753 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01231-1

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