Limiting Width of Meander Belts 



375 



The following is a brief outline of 

 method and result of an attempt in this 

 direction. Three streams were first con- 

 sidered as having mature meanders on 

 flood plains of very slight inclination. 

 They were the tiny Matfield at Elm- 

 wood, Mass., the moderate Oder at 

 Kosel, Silesia, and the giant Mississippi 

 at Greenville. 



The Matfield was carefully mapped 

 for this purpose. 



Essential quantities, such as the me- 

 ander belt, were measured directly on 

 the ground. As run-off could onl} r be 

 determined by observations through a 

 long series of years, I thought it better 

 to utilize the results already obtained 

 by 36 and 19 years respectively of ob- 

 servations in the neighboring Mystic 

 Lake and Lake Cochichuate watersheds. 

 I obtained the results from Water Sup- 

 ply and Irrigation Paper No. 35, page 

 39, that on those basins the run-off was 

 respectively 1.49 and 1.46 cubic feet of 

 water per second for every square mile 

 of surface. As the Matfield basin above 

 Elmwood Village bridge has an area of 

 about 43.5 square miles, making allow- 

 ance for the water diverted to the use 

 of the city of Brockton, I estimate its 

 run-off at an average of 63 cubic feet 

 per second. The meander belt is about 

 450 feet wide. 



For the Oder we learn from Der Oder- 

 strom, Berlin, 1896, map 1 1 , that there 

 is a typical recent cut-off at Kosel. The 

 meander belt is 4,688 feet wide. The 

 same work puts the Oder's discharge 

 for mean stages, with the Kosel gage 

 reading 1.29 meters, at 1,907 cubic 

 feet per second. According to a table 

 by Loeschmann, Beitrage zur Hydro- 

 graphie der oberen Oder, page 55, this 

 corresponds to an average annual flow 

 of 2,407 cubic feet per second. This is 

 probably too small a quantity, as the 

 volume discharged at high stages must 

 have a far greater departure from the 

 mean than that at low stages. 



The Mississippi data are from Park 



Morrill's Floods of the Mississippi River, 

 Report of the Chief of the Weather Bu- 

 reau, 1 896-' 7, page 391 and plate IV. 

 Adding the drainage of the upper Mis- 

 sissippi, Ohio, Missouri, and Arkansas 

 basins to A, B, C, and 2 /i D in the 

 Central Valley, I estimate the discharge 

 at Greenville at 570,000 cubic feet per 

 second. From sheet 14 of the prelimi- 

 nary map of the lower Mississippi it 

 appears that the meander belt attains a 

 maximum width of 55,000 feet at that 

 point. 



Since , the doubtful data for these 

 streams was all I had access to for ma- 

 turely meandering streams, I looked for 

 what confirmation might be had from 

 various rivers not on typical flood 

 plains, but flowing in inherited mean- 

 ders now incised in the region of Appa- 

 lachian and Alleghany uplifts. I found 

 run-off estimates for these streams in 

 F. H. Newell's Hydrographic work, 

 Nineteenth and Twentieth Reports of 

 the Director of the U. S. Geological Sur- 

 vey, section Hydrography. Meander 

 belts were measured on the topographic 

 maps of the Geological Survey. 



To show the departure of these 

 streams from the flood-plain type the 

 feet of descent per mile have been in- 

 cluded in the table in the column headed 

 f ; mb heads that containing widths of 

 meander belts in feet, while md heads 

 the column of discharges in cubic feet 

 per second. 



A — ON FLOOD PLAINS 



.Matfield 



Oder 



Mississippi.. 



63 Klmwood. Mass. 

 4.68S 2,4'7 Kosel. Silesia. 

 55 coo [ 570,000 Greenville, Miss. 



B — INCISED 





6.4 



7 

 7 



* 



4,000 

 S.44S 

 9,76* 

 9.000 

 26,41:0 



M34 

 i,779 

 2,080" 

 2,700 



40,000 









Greenbrier 



Shenandoah... 

 Tennessee 



Alderson, W, Va. 

 Near Potomac River 

 Chattanooga, Tenn. 



* Less than a fuot. 



