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- Description: Overview of features associated with meandering streams. A meandering stream migrates laterally by sediment erosion on the outside of the meander. Adjacent to the channel levee deposits build up. If the climate is humid the floodplain area beyond the levees may be covered with water most of the time, and may form a swamp (backswamp). Rivers that want to enter the main stream may not make it up the levee, and empty either into the backswamp (filing it up gradually) or flow parallel to the stream for a long distance until they finally join (yazoo streams). Meanders may cut into each other as they grow (neck cutoffs), and then the river shortcuts (growing meanders reduce the slope, cutoffs are a means to increase the slope again, feedback loop) and the old meander is abandoned and slowly fills with fine sediment during floods (oxbow lakes). Also, as a river builds up its levees and raises itself over the floodplain, the slope and the transport power of the stream decrease, the channel fills gradually with sediment, and finally (often during a flood) the river will breach its levee (this process is called avulsion) and follow a steeper path down the valley.
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