River Dynamism: Mapping and Analysis

The great attention which rivers have attracted shows the dynamic nature of this vital component of hydrological open system, where energy and matters are exchanged with external environment. The dynamic entities of rivers’ characteristics vary over both space and time. On whatever perspective and scale at which the rivers may be studied, they always have relevance in social, environmental, economic and political situations. Because of the dynamism of rivers, studying them cannot be exhaustive. Various studies which have been carried out world-wide have shown that active rivers rarely maintained the stability of their form or morphological features for a long period of time, instead they show some progressive changes and developments as the years rolled by. In this work, the focus was to use the instrumentality of Geographic Information System (GIS) to investigate, map and analyse the changes in a river’s dynamic meandering channel system, using River Liza in Cumbria, England as case study. Cartographical modelling, planform morphological analysis, probability modelling and cross-sectional analysis were methods of analyses employed in the study.