Maryland Stream Survey: Bankfull Discharge and Channel Characteristics of Streams in the Coastal Plain Hydrologic Region

摘要

As public demand increases for restoring the physical, biological, and aesthetic characteristics of degraded rivers, engineers and environmental managers are attempting to design in accordance with the natural tendencies of rivers in flood protection, channel stabilization, stream crossing, channel realignment, and watershed management projects. For these endeavors, designers need information on regional hydrologic relationships to evaluate and predict the dimension, pattern, and profile of natural rivers. Empirical relationships between dimensions of bankfull channel geometry (i.e., width, mean depth, cross-sectional area) and water discharge or drainage area are useful in stream assessment and development of preliminary design concepts. The applicability of the derived predictive equations is limited to rivers similar to those providing the data. Thus, empirical relationships for channel geometry are applicable only for rivers in specific hydro-physiographic regions with relatively homogeneous climate, geology, and vegetation.