The Application of Hydraulic and Sediment Transport Models in Fluvial Geomorphology

After publishing the famous Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology in the early 1960s the work of Luna Leopold Gordon Wolman and John Miller became a key for opening the door to understanding rivers and streams. They first illustrated the problem to geomorphologists and geographers. Later Chang in his Fluvial Processes in River Engineering provided a basis for engineers showing this group of professionals how to deal with rivers and how to understand them. Since then more informative studies have been published. Many of the authors started to combine fluvial geomorphology knowledge and river engineering needs such as Tools in Fluvial Geomorphology by G. Mathias Kondolf and Hervé Piégay or focused more on river engineering tasks such as Stream Restoration in Dynamic Fluvial Systems: Scientific Approaches by Andrew Simon Sean Bennett and Janine Castro. Finally Luna Leopold summarized river and stream morphologies in the beautiful A view of the river. It appears that we continue to explore this subject in the right direction. We better understand rivers and streams and as engineers and fluvial geomorphologists we can establish tools to help bring rivers alive. However there is still a hunger for more scientific tools that we could use to further understand rivers and to support the development of healthy streams and rivers with high biodiversity in the present world which has started to face water scarcity.