Meandering Characteristics of the Yimin River in Hulun Buir Grassland, Inner Mongolia, China

Abstract

The evolution of meandering rivers continues to attract considerable attention in research and for practical applications, given that it is closely associated with the safety of river systems and riparian zones. There has been much discussion regarding the various channel planform features exhibited by meandering rivers under different river systems and riparian conditions. The Yimin River is a good example and is located southeast of the Hulun Buir Grassland, which is characterised by a fragile ecosystem and little anthropological activity along with active flow during the non-frozen season from May to November each year and relatively low sediment discharge compared with the Yellow River and Mississippi River. Improved analysis of the evolution of the Yimin River from 1975 to 2019 can support increased local species diversity and more effective flood risk and river management. With the combined Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technique, remote sensing images, including Landsat images and global surface water data, are used to analyse the channel planform features of the freely meandering river channel in the middle and lower Yimin River. The results show that the percentage of low sinuosity channel bends was higher than that of high-sinuosity bends. Although the bends with an amplitude greater than 0.48 km and sinuosity greater than 2.3 have an evident upstream-skewed trend, the main channel planform features were downstream skewed with 1499 such bends. The river system conditions in the Yimin River, including lower sediment discharge and vegetation cover, are conducive to the development of downstream-skewed bends. The high-sinuosity bends were found to have a relatively larger ratio during 1981–2000, a period with higher mean annual streamflow compared with other time periods.