A better understanding of flow and sediment dynamics in the lowermost portions of large‐tropical rivers is essential to constraining estimates of worldwide sediment delivery to the ocean. Flow velocity, salinity, and suspended‐sediment concentration were measured for 25 h at three cross sections in the tidal Song Hau distributary of the Mekong River, Vietnam. Two campaigns took place during comparatively high‐seasonal and low‐seasonal discharge, and estuarine conditions varied dramatically between them. The system transitioned from a tidal river with ephemeral presence of a salt wedge during high flow to a partially mixed estuary during low flow. The changing freshwater input, sediment sources, and estuarine characteristics resulted in seaward sediment export during high flow and landward import during low flow. The Dinh An channel of the Song Hau distributary exported sediment to the coast at a rate of about 1 t s−1 during high flow and imported sediment in a spatially varying manner at approximately 0.3 t s−1 during low flow. Scaling these values results in a yearly Mekong sediment discharge estimate about 65% smaller than a generally accepted estimate of 110 Mt yr−1, although the limited temporal and spatial nature of this study implies a relatively high degree of uncertainty for the new estimate. Fluvial advection of sediment was primarily responsible for the high‐flow sediment export. Exchange‐flow and tidal processes, including local resuspension, were principally responsible for the low‐flow import. The resulting bed‐sediment grain size was coarser and more variable during high flow and finer during low, and the residual flow patterns support the maintenance of mid‐channel islands.

Density-driven submarine flows, including turbidity currents, play an important role in the transfer of sediment into deep water. These bottom-hugging flows often produce flow-transverse bedforms along their path. A sedimentological and geophysical survey of the Stehekin River delta in Lake Chelan, Washington, reveals a downslope-elongate field of bedforms on the delta foreset associated with hyperpycnal discharges of the Stehekin River. An analysis of the bedform morphologies, delta geometry, and density contrast between lake and river water suggests that these hyperpycnal flows are Froude-supercritical. The bedforms are likely cyclic steps, flow-transverse bedforms that are bounded by stable hydraulic jumps between alternating subcritical and supercritical flow regimes. The ability to examine the three-dimensional bed configuration produced by natural density-driven flows adds valuable information to the body of experimental work focused on the behavior of cyclic steps in flumes.

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Sediment transfer from land to ocean begins in coastal settings and, for large rivers such as the Amazon, has dramatic impacts over thousands of kilometers covering diverse environmental conditions. In the relatively natural Amazon tidal river, combinations of fluvial and marine processes transition toward the ocean, affecting the transport and accumulation of sediment in floodplains and tributary mouths. The enormous discharge of Amazon fresh water causes estuarine processes to occur on the continental shelf, where much sediment accumulation creates a large clinoform structure and where additional sediment accumulates along its shoreward boundary in tidal flats and mangrove forests. Some remaining Amazon sediment is transported beyond the region near the river mouth, and fluvial forces on it diminish. Numerous perturbations to Amazon sediment transport and accumulation occur naturally, but human actions will likely dominate future change, and now is the time to document, understand, and mitigate their impacts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 13 is January 3, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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