As a child, one of my favorite Walt Disney movies was “Pocahontas.” The free-spirited young woman who dreams of more inspired me as I grew up and faced my own challenges. These days, as an adult, the songs of “Pocahontas” continue to ignite flames of inspiration within me. When she sings, “What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice, the water is always changing…” It reminds me of the constant ebb and flow of all things in life. Pocahontas was onto something there – but there is a lot more to the story when it comes to evolving waterways.

Water molecules continuously flow through river systems, but it is not just the water that is in consistent dynamic change. The sediments, gravels, woody materials and aquatic organisms are also constantly moving. And that is a good thing.

Fluvial geomorphology is a scientific study that has made headway in recent years to bring river movement concepts into common knowledge. The term refers to natural river movement processes, such as erosion, transportation, floodplain formation and deposition of sediments.  A central theme of many river conferences recently has been ‘freedom space’ and allowing rivers room to roam as they did before vast urbanization choked their banks. But why do rivers need to move?

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