Morphological development of river widenings with variable sediment supply

Abstract

River widening is a common restoration approach to mitigate the adverse effects of past stream alterations on infrastructure and the riparian ecosystem by stabilizing the river bed and enhancing habitat heterogeneity. In this study, two river widening approaches, excavated and dynamic, are described for the case of moderately steep gravel-bed rivers in the Alpine foothills, with a focus on dynamic river widening. As most channelized rivers exhibit ongoing degradation due to the lack of sediment supply and efforts to restore sediment transport are increasing, the consideration of the response of river widenings to variable sediment supply is important. For this purpose, insights from regime theory are applied to river widening and several experimental flume and field studies on channel response to variable sediment supply are reviewed. Dynamic river widenings are expected to be morphologically active in weakly degraded rivers with sufficient sediment supply, while they may not be an appropriate restoration approach for highly degraded rivers due to persistent impairment of morphological activity.