Distinctiveness and Diversity of Arid Zone River Systems

Tooth, Stephen; Nanson, Gerald C.

doi:10.1002/9780470710777.ch12

Cited by 34 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 144 publications

(191 reference statements)

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“…Rivers in these zones often play a central role in landscape change and exert a strong influence on the human use of these marginal environments (Tooth and Nanson, 2011). Therefore, the processes, forms and changes of these rivers are increasingly a focus of scientific and applied research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

River network evolution and fluvial process responses to human activity in a hyper-arid environment – Case of the Tarim River in Northwest China

Disse

Huang

et al. 2016

CATENA

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The Tarim River, the longest dryland river in an extremely arid region of China, has undergone ever-increasing human impacts over recent centuries (particularly since the late 1950s during which time large-scale land reclamation in the basin has taken place). Historical literature/maps, gauged hydrological data and satellite images were analyzed to examine how the river network evolution in the basin and the fluvial morphology of the main stem of the Tarim River have responded to human influences. The results demonstrate that human activity (inhabitation, land reclamation and water resources development) in the basin have had significant impacts on the Tarim River, causing major changes in runoff and sediment transport, river network composition and river morphology (especially planform patterns). Gauged hydrological data from the past five decades presented an obvious reduction in runoff and sediment load in the Tarim River, even though the runoff from source tributaries exhibited a gentle increase. The annual occurrence of low flow events showed a significant increase, and the occurrence of moderate-high flow events followed a gentle decrease. The river network system has disintegrated from a historically '(quasi-) centripetal' system with nine tributaries into several isolated river systems, which have mainly developed since the 20th century. Currently, only four tributaries flow into the main stem river, which is dominated by braided channel patterns in the upper reaches and meandering (typically with distorted bends) patterns in the middle reaches. The braided reach was in aggradation and in high lateral mobility. The mean width and braiding intensity of the braided reach followed a gentle decrease mainly due to the reclamation of river flood plains to farmlands and embankments. The sinuosity index of the current Tarim River channel is distinctively lower than the indexes of the old channels that were abandoned decades or centuries ago, even though the sinuosity index of the meandering channel followed a gentle increase in recent decades due to the increased occurrence of low flow events. Human activity has changed the natural fluvial processes and morphology of the Tarim River and has reduced the diversity of the river network system.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

River network evolution and fluvial process responses to human activity in a hyper-arid environment – Case of the Tarim River in Northwest China

Disse

Huang

et al. 2016

CATENA

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“…A distinctive characteristic of dryland geomorphology by this interaction is that the rivers associate with adjacent aeolian dune fields (Nanson et al, 2002). Many sand seas or dune fields around the world are predominantly located within drainage basins with seasonally active rivers, streams and playas, such as Namib Desert -Kuiseb River Basin (Lancaster, 2002;Grodek et al, 2013), southwest Kalahari dune field -Auob, Nossop and Molopo Rivers (Bullard and Nash, 1998), Western Desert of Egypt -Nile River (El-Baz et al, 2000;Phillipps et al, 2012), Thar Desert -Luni River (Kale et al, 2000), Taklimakan Desert -Tarim River/Basin (Zhu et al, 1980;Sun et al, 2011), Simpson DesertLake Eyre Basin (Bullard and McTainsh, 2003), Algodones dune field -Colorado River (Sweet et al, 1988), Monte Desert -Colorado River (Argentina) (Abraham et al, 2009) aeolian dunes influence channel processes and fluvial geomorphology (Tooth and Nanson, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Over the last few decades, there has been a rising interest in the interactions between aeolian and fluvial processes from geomorphologists, sedimentologist and ecologists (Bullard and Livingstone, 2002;Field et al, 2009;Ravi et al, 2010;Belnap et al, 2011). More and more researchers have focused on the combination of desert and river landforms in arid zone, highlighting the important role of river in providing the plentiful sources, suitable space (and wind regime) for desert development (Bullard and McTainsh, 2003;Draut, 2012), and mutually controlling relationship of aeolian dune and river channel (Tooth and Nanson, 2011). Most of the above researches are limited to locally qualitative descriptions (Bullard and Nash, 1998), there have been fewer detailed data with a relatively large scale, such as dune fields in watersheds (Muhs et al, 2003;Bullard and McTainsh, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphological characteristics of interactions between deserts and rivers in northern China

Yan

et al. 2015

Aeolian Research

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“…This is mainly caused by the large scale of morphodynamic processes taking place on the slopes and depending mainly of basins hypsometry (Conacher, Sala, 1998;Tooth, Nanson, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stream channel development in the southern parts of the High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Dłużewski¹,

Krzemień²,

Rojan³

et al. 2013

Geografija

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The aim of this study is to review current knowledge on channels development in mountain basins in arid zones. The research was intended to describe the main triggering factors responsible for the development of ephemeral river channels in such areas. A detailed study was made of the Upper Dades basin located on the southern slopes of the High Atlas Mountains (Morocco). In this paper we analyse the morphometry of channels of different orders in three small basins chosen for a thorough study in order to present the details of channel characteristics.The results show that the development of stream channels of the same order may vary greatly. This is mainly due to variation between the basins in lithology, vegetation cover, precipitation amounts and hillslope sediment supply. We prove however that the key agents of stream channel development are the energy of water and associated mass gravity movements in the period when water is absent. The morphological component provides strong evidence for this conclusion. The results show that runoff energy generally compensates for the low amount of water in 2nd and 3rd order channels where erosion is dominant. The 4th order channels are therefore better adapted to evacuate significant discharges (weak slope, large channel) which therefore decreases the erosive capacity of their stream flows. In this paper we also discuss whether the impact of the limited hillslope vegetation and the supply of coarse-grained sediment in the channels are important in the development of channels in mountain basins in arid regions. We conclude that intense rainfall-runoff events that lead to short-lived but high-energy flash floods have a more significant impact in contemporary channel development. Channels, especially those of 3rd and higher order, tend to be very unstable during large floods. We show that channels located in small basins in mountains in arid zones are in a state of almost permanent non-equilibrium.

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Distinctiveness and Diversity of Arid Zone River Systems

Cited by 34 publications

References 144 publications

River network evolution and fluvial process responses to human activity in a hyper-arid environment – Case of the Tarim River in Northwest China

River network evolution and fluvial process responses to human activity in a hyper-arid environment – Case of the Tarim River in Northwest China

Morphological characteristics of interactions between deserts and rivers in northern China

Stream channel development in the southern parts of the High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

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