ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Hydrosphere
This article is part of the Research TopicMonitoring and Modeling of Runoff and Soil Processes in River BasinsView all 7 articles
Effects of Water and Sediment Variations on Estuarine Channel Evolution: Mechanisms and Morphological Discrimination
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Women's University, Jinan, China
- 2Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, China
- 3Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
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The tail channel, as a critical zone of river-sea interaction, undergoes morphological evolution that significantly impacts the ecological environment. This study employed physical experiments to simulate the evolution processes of a meandering tail channel under varying flow and sediment conditions. The results indicate that during sediment-feeding phases, the non-estuarine reach primarily experiences deposition under low-flow conditions, leading to bed aggradation, channel widening, and mid-channel bar development, potentially shifting the channel pattern towards a wandering style. Under high-flow conditions, scour dominates, resulting in narrow and deep cross-sections. In the estuarine reach, a nascent Lambda-shaped delta forms under low flows, while erosion prevails under high flows, producing a W-shaped cross-section. After sediment feeding ceases, the non-estuarine reach maintains a wide and shallow form under low flows but undergoes intense scour under high flows, causing the channel to become narrow and deep. In the estuarine reach, a multi-distributary fan-shaped deposit develops under low flows, whereas high flows trigger channel migration or avulsion. This study, focusing on the Yellow River tail channel, validated the aforementioned evolutionary patterns. Experiments revealed that sediment transport, regardless of whether the bed material is mobile or depositing, significantly influences channel morphology. Particle size distribution analysis of sediment extracted from different sections showed a strong correlation with the degree of channel evolution. Based on these findings, the resistance law expression was refined, and a channel pattern discrimination method suitable for the lower Yellow River was proposed. Validation with measured data confirmed the method's rationality and reliability.
Keywords: Bed Sediment Transport, Fluvial evolution, physical experiment, Water-Sediment Factors, Weakly-Tidal Estuarine Channel
Received: 28 Oct 2025; Accepted: 09 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Su, Sun and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jing Su
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