Let rivers be rivers!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Many of our rivers today look like one way streets for water. Natural rivers have multiple channels, and that keeps them fresher and more sustainable.
Restoring natural channels boosts ecosystem resilience… but how do we get them back to how they were? While keeping costs down!
Enter Austin Chadwick and team from UC Santa Barbara. Using satellite images and computer software, they studied over EIGHTY rivers. They mapped erosion and sediment movement!
Results? Single-channel rivers exhibited equal parts of erosion and sediment deposits. But multi-channel rivers? More erosion than deposits! Applying this knowledge can help identify cost-efficient ways to restore rivers.
Which we need… so that we can… live.
Reference: Austin J. Chadwick et al. ,Single- and multithread rivers originate from (im)balance between lateral erosion and accretion.Science389,146-150(2025).DOI:10.1126/science.ads6567