Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 5.13 (A) General features of a floodplain (from Strahler and Strahler, Elements of
Physical Geology, Copyright ©1979, reprinted by permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.)
and (B) a diagram of heterogeneity of a tropical floodplain (from Welcomme, 1979; reprinted
by permission of Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.).
and rivers downstream become “sediment starved” and significantly more
erosive. Natural sandbars are less likely to form in a starved river. In an
extreme case, construction of the Aswan Dam led the Nile River to become
sediment starved. The lack of sediment, in turn, has led to erosion of the
Nile Delta, where the Nile River enters the Mediterranean, and a subse-
quent loss of valuable agricultural land that has served as Egypt's bread-
basket for millennia (Milliman et al., 1989).
Reservoirs can also alter the riparian habitat by interfering with flood-
ing; in dry, sandy rivers they allow for establishment of more riparian veg-
etation and reduce the width of the channel (Friedman et al., 1998). Dams
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