River Meandering Prediction: Case Studies for Four Rivers in Texas

River meandering could endanger transportation infrastructures by lateral expansion and down-valley translation of meander bend. In this study, we used the RVR Meander package for four bridge crossings in Texas where the meanders have moved considerably over the past several decades. These bridge crossings are over the Brazos River, the Nueces River, the Sabine River, and the Trinity River in Texas. Widely used meander migration model developed from Ikeda et al. (1981) was adopted, which relates migration rate (M) to vertically averaged near-bank velocity (ub') through the use of a coefficient of bank erosion (E). This study attempts to calculate E values for eroded banks from measured long-term migration rates and computed near bank velocities. The calculated erosion coefficients were then used for the prediction of the future location of meandering streams. The advantages and limitations of the approach are discussed focusing on the capability of predicting the planform evolution of natural rivers.