Erosion, sediment transportation and accumulation in rivers

The present paper analyses the interrelation between erosion, sediment transportation and accumulation proposed by N. I. Makkaveyev (1908–1983) and its further development in modern studies of river channel processes in Russia. Spatio-temporal linkages between erosion and accumulation are defined considering channel processes at different scales –river longitudinal profile, channel morphological patterns, alluvial bedforms (bars, dunes) and individual sediment particles. Relations between river geomorphic activity, flow transportation capacity and sediment budgets are established (sediment input and output; channel bed erosion and sediment entrainment into flow –termination of sediment transport and its deposition). Channel planforms, floodplain segments separated by the latter and alluvial channel bedforms are shown to be geomorphic expressions of sediment transport process at different spatial and temporal scales. This paper is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of N. I. Makkaveyev, Professor of the Moscow State University, author of the book “River channel and erosion in its basin” (1955). That book is regarded in Russia as the pioneering work which initiated the complex hydrological and geographical studies of channel processes and laid a basis for the theory of unified fluvial erosion-accumulation process.