Modeling the effects of variable annual flow on river channel meander migration patterns, Sacramento River, California, USA

Flow regulation impacts the ecology of major rivers in various ways, including altering river channel migration patterns. Many current meander migration models employ a constant annual flow or dominant discharge value. To assess how flow regulation alters river function, variable annual flows based on an empirical relationship between bank erosion rates and cumulative effective stream power - were added into an existing migration model. This enhanced model was used to evaluate the potential geomorphic and ecological consequences of four regulated flow scenarios (i.e., different hydrographs) currently being proposed on the Sacramento River in California. The observed rate of land reworked correlated significantly with observed cumulative effective stream power during seven time increments from 1956 to 1975 (r(2) = 0.74, p = 0.02). The river was observed to rework 3.0 ha/yr of land (a mean channel migration rate of 7.7 m/yr) with rates ranging from 0.8 ha/yr to 5.1 ha/yr (2.0 to 13.3 m/yr), during the analyzed time periods. Modeled rates of land reworked correlated significantly with observed rates of land reworked for the variable flow model (r2 = 0.78, p = 0.009). The meander migration scenario modeling predicted a difference of 1 to 8 percent between the four flow management scenarios and the base scenario.