A braided river consists of a network of multiple shallow channels that diverge and rejoin around ephemeral braid bars. This gives the river a fancied resemblance to the interwoven strands of a braid. The braid bars, also known as channel bars, branch islands, or accreting islands, are usually unstable and may be completely covered at times of high water. The channels and braid bars are usually highly mobile, with the river layout often changing significantly during flood events. When the islets separating channels are stabilized by vegetation, so that they are more permanent features, they are sometimes called aits or eyots.
The physical processes that determine whether a river will be braided or meandering are not fully understood. However, there is wide agreement that a river becomes braided when it carries an abundant supply of sediments.
These experimental results were expressed in formulas relating the critical slope for braiding to the discharge and grain size. The higher the discharge, the lower the critical slope, while larger grain size yields a higher critical slope. However, these give only an incomplete picture, and numerical simulations have become increasingly important for understanding braided rivers.
Numerical models suggest that bedload transport (movement of sediment particles by rolling or bouncing along the river bottom) is essential to formation of braided rivers, with net erosion of sediments at channel divergences and net deposition at convergences. Braiding is reliably reproduced in simulations whenever there is little lateral constraint on flow and there is significant bedload transport. Braiding is not observed in simulations of the extreme cases of pure scour (no deposition taking place), which produces a dendritic system, or of cohesive sediments with no bedload transport. Meanders fully develop only when the river banks are sufficiently stabilized to limit lateral flow. An increase in suspended sediment relative to bedload allows the deposition of fine erosion-resistant material on the inside of a curve, which accentuated the curve and in some instances, causes a river to shift from a braided to a meandering profile. A stream with cohesive banks that are resistant to erosion will form narrow, deep, meandering channels, whereas a stream with highly erodible banks will form wide, shallow channels, preventing the helical flow of the water necessary for meandering and resulting in the formation of braided channels.
Braided rivers occur in many environments, but are most common in wide valleys associated with mountainous regions or their piedmonts or in areas of coarse-grained sediments and limited growth of vegetation near the river banks. They are also found on fluvial (stream-dominated) alluvial fans. Extensive braided river systems are found in Alaska, Canada, New Zealand's South Island, and the Himalayas, which all contain young, rapidly eroding mountains.
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