Applying a Model of Curvature-Driven Bend Migration Developed for Alluvial Rivers to a Gravel-Bedded River With Reaches of Exposed Bedrock

The South River, Virginia, a sinuous, gravel-bedded river influenced by frequent bedrock exposures, appears at first glance to be meandering. However, when its planform statistics are compared to a freely meandering river (the Teklanika River, Alaska), systematic differences become apparent. Bends of the South River have shorter lengths, longer radii of curvatures, a distinctive meander wavelength spectrum, and a lower fractal dimension of D = 1.11 than those of the Teklanika River. Sixty five percent of the length of South River in the study area consists of sections with exposed bedrock (either on the bed or the banks) and islands. Alluvial floodplains of varying lengths are scattered between sections of bedrock and islands, accounting for the remaining 35% of the study reach. In these areas, the South River displays sinuosity values that may be as high as 2.5. Within the alluvial reaches, aerial photographs from 1937 and 2005 document significant channel migration. Driven by the need to quantify the flux of mercury-contaminated sediments entering the river through bank erosion, we applied the bend migration model of Johannesson and Parker (1989). The model, when schematized for hydraulics of the alluvial sections of the South River and calibrated to the total area of erosion mapped from aerial photographs, correctly predicts 45% of the observed locations of erosion as mapped from the aerial photographs and observed in the field. The total area of erosion computed using the predicted near-bank excess velocity is within 14% of that mapped. According to a non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test, the predicted areas of erosion along the river are not significantly different from those defined by the historical aerial photographs (P >= 0.05, two tailed test). These results suggest that curvature dependent hydraulic models for alluvial rivers may provide useful predictions of total erosion of alluvium on mixed bedrock/alluvial rivers like the South River. However, improved models may be required to precisely predict the locations of eroding banks.