Automatic River Planform Recognition Tested on Chilean Rivers

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of the automatic identification of river reaches and their planform type given the (observed) set of geomorphic elements and units. It introduces further advances with respect to the original proposal by Nardini and Brierley, and it explores explicitly the ability of the algorithm and associated tools to work properly on significantly different rivers while adopting a given same parametrization. This was indeed an envisaged ability speculated as a challenging conclusion of the previous work. The Duqueco, Laja, and Biobío rivers (Chile) were analyzed for this purpose. The conclusion is definitely positive, which opens future promising application horizons.

Keywords

• river planform
• river reaches
• automatic identification
• geomorphic elements and units
• Biobío basin