Riverbank Erosion Rates Calculation

What is the best way to calculate the riverbank erosion rates and estimate the annual riverbank erosion rate?

Taxonomy

• Hydrology
• River Studies
• River Engineering
• Hydrogeology
• Hydromorphology
• River Basin management
• River Restoration
• Hydrogeophysics
• Hydrological Modelling
• River Engineering
• Geo-hydrology

6 Answers

1. We use Bank Erosion Hazard Index and Near Bank Stress methodologies.  

2. I am surprised that none of the comments reference applying river bank erosion models.  There are several that can provide an estimate strictly from the soils characteristics and the streams morphology. Cross sections can now be obtained from Lidar high sensitivity readings and soils data is readily available in the web. If the data is for a project, such as a bridge or retaining wall, then some field data is needed to calibrate the models. Check on Google and you will find many references to river bank erosion models.

3. You need an experience d engineer whip will check soils sl opes  velocities etc. There is no single answer without information.

4. I just took a class on this and we used erosion pin place in a grid and angled 45 degrees to the slope leaving a set amount above the ground and took measurements until there was enough data to calculate the average.

5. As Brian Richter says, the best way to get result is through satellite imagery measurements. Apart from that erosion pins, it depends on type soil present near river banks, infrastructural activities that may involve in erosion of the bank and natural erosion of soil either through precipitation or through sudden surge in river flow released by nearby dams or reservoirs. For one of my academic projects, I needed to estimate erodibility factor on land surface due to precipitation, I used RUSLE factor, as I had few hands on data. 

   1 Comment

   1. how can extract the real bank from the image ?

      is is you mean by using  NDWI ?

      I am very interested

6. Vasil, there are many good ways to measure riverbank erosion. We've used historical aerial photographs (see attached paper) as well as 'erosion pins,' i.e., long pieces of rebar steel rods pounded horizontally into the river bank, and then measuring the erosion from the tip of the exposed rod.  However, I'm sure that others can suggest ways of using satellite imagery measurements as well, which may be the only way to get good measurements in remote areas that have not been photographed from airplanes over time.

   1 Comment

   1. are you using NDWI ?