Channel shifting and bank erosion pattern in response to land use and climate change in the Cuivre River Watershed in East Central Missouri.

Keywords: Keywords: channel shifting; bank erosion, anthropocene; landuse
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Bank erosion is a major challenge for watersheds, largely driven by direct human activities and climate change in conjunction with the natural flow regime. Human activities are reshaping Earth’s surface - some triggering channel instability- leading to questions about their effects on bank erosion. The Cuivre River and its two tributaries located within the Cuivre River watershed, northwest of St. Louis, Missouri has a limited pool of knowledge on bank erosion with its most recent study carried out in the early 1990s. This research aims to explore the lateral extent of bank erosion along with channel shifting pattern over the course of 1972- 2015. It hypothesizes that, while channel process-form relationships dictate bank erosion, human activities, particularly land use and climate change, have largely deteriorated this fluvial system. The preliminary analysis of the aerial photograph and streamflow data shows that bank erosion rate has dramatically increased over the last 30 years, compared to the pre-1990 period. Furthermore, agriculture and urban dominated sub-watersheds exhibit larger bank erosion rate than those dominated by forest covers.