How does gradient influence a stream sinuosity

Helens in Washington State is a good example of this Figure A stream that occupies a wide, flat flood plain with a low gradient typically carries only sand-sized and finer sediments and develops a sinuous flow pattern. As you saw in Figure This leads to erosion of the banks on the outside of the curve, deposition on the inside, and formation of a point bar Figure Over time, the sinuosity of the stream becomes increasingly exaggerated, and the channel migrates around within its flood plain, forming a meandering pattern.

A well-developed meandering river is shown in Figure The meander in the middle of the photo has reached the point where the thin neck of land between two parts of the channel is about to be eroded through.

When this happens, another oxbow lake will form like the others in the photo. Gradient is the key factor controlling stream velocity, and of course, velocity controls sediment erosion and deposition. This map shows the elevations of Priest Creek in the Kelowna area. The length of the creek between 1, m and 1, m elevation is 2. Use the scale bar to estimate the distance between 1, m and m and then calculate that gradient. At the point where a stream enters a still body of water — a lake or the ocean — sediment is deposited and a delta forms.

Much of the Fraser delta is very young in geological terms. Shortly after the end of the last glaciation 10, years ago , the delta did not extend past New Westminster. Routing of Buffer Attributes. Routing of Hillslope Attributes. Data Management Import Data. Risk Analysis Overlap Tool - Reaches. Sub-basin Classification Sort and Rank. Cumulative Distributions. Watershed Information-EPA. Maximum Downstream Gradient. Mean Annual Precipitation.

Tributary Confluence Effects. Valley Width 5x bankfull depth. Tongass Channel Classification. Tributary Confluence Density. Mapping Floodplain Rasters. Delineating Off-Channel Habitat.

Coastal Cutthroat Trout. Probability of Salt Marsh and Mud flats. Shallow Landslide Potential Hillside. Channelized Mass Wasting Debris Flow. Channel Sedimentation Potential. Watershed Scale, Single Year. Upslope Wood Recruitment. Confluence Zone Refugia. References Terrainworks website. Channel Sinuosity. Parameter Description: Channel sinuosity, the measure of deviation of a channel between two points from the shortest possible path is calculated as the ratio of actual channel path length divided by shortest path length Figure 1.

Data Type: Line stream layer. Model Description:. In NetMap, a user selects the multiple of channel widths to define the length scale of the channel segment over which to calculate sinuosity; thus the channel length over which channel sinuosity is estimated is scale dependent and varies with location in the basin Figure 2.