Distributary vs Anabranching - What's the difference?
distributary | anabranching |
(hydrology) A branch of a river delta; a channel that distributes a river's waters into the sea, as with the Atchafalaya River of the Mississippi.
(hydrology, of a water channel) Splitting around mid-channel islands that are roughly three times the width of the channel at full discharge.
* {{quote-book
, year=1969
, page=425
, author=Richard J. Chorley
, coauthors=Roger Graham Barry
, title=Water, Earth, and Man
* 2008 January 18, Robert C. Walter and Dorothy J. Merritts, "Natural Streams and the Legacy of Water-Powered Mills"[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5861/299], Science 319(5861), page 299:
Anabranching is a coordinate term of distributary.
As a noun distributary
is a branch of a river delta; a channel that distributes a river's waters into the sea, as with the Atchafalaya River of the Mississippi.As an adjective anabranching is
splitting around mid-channel islands that are roughly three times the width of the channel at full discharge.distributary
English
Noun
(distributaries)Antonyms
*tributaryanabranching
English
Adjective
(-)citation, passage=Work on anabranching channels has been restricted mainly to the alluvial plains of the Murray and the Murrumbidgee, where the anabranches -- offshoots -- rejoin the original trunk or unite with a next-neighbouring trunk, sometimes after a distance of tens of miles.}}
- In particular, logjams blocked channels and led to the formation of side channels and floodplain sloughs, producing multiple anabranching channels and riverine wetlands that are in stark contrast to the large, single channels that exist in these streams today.
