Plants steer the way rivers meander across the landscape
August 23, 2025
Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
A view of seasonal flow in Shoshone Creek – an unvegetated meandering stream in Nevada, USA. Credit: M. Hasson and M. Lapôtre
New research confirms that the rise of land-based plant life changed the way rivers move, but not in the way geologists have thought, and taught, for decades.
The new study in the journal Science has discovered a new way in which floodplain vegetation – the plant life which grows in flat land next to a river – controls river dynamics.
Today, rivers on Earth come in 2 types: braided and meandering.
Meandering ones form single channels that curve back and forth across the landscape. Well known examples include the Rio Grande in the US and Africa’s River Nile.
Braided ones, like the Brahmaputra which flows through Tibet, India, and Bangladesh, widen and divide into many interwoven channels separated by islands of sediment.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/water/plants-meandering-rivers/