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18-615: The Godley River is an alpine braided river flowing through Canterbury , in New Zealand's South Island . The river's headwaters are in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park . It flows south for 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the Southern Alps into the top end of the glacial Lake Tekapo , this forming part of the ultimate headwaters of the Waitaki hydroelectric scheme . This article about

36-478: A lagoon as it reaches the ocean. For much of its journey, the river is braided , running through a wide shingle bed. Close to Mount Hutt , however, it is briefly confined to a narrow canyon known as the Rakaia Gorge . The Rakaia River is bridged in two places. The busiest crossing is at the small town of Rakaia , 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the river mouth, where State Highway 1 using Rakaia Bridge and

54-485: A meandering profile. These experimental results were expressed in formulas relating the critical slope for braiding to the discharge and grain size. The higher the discharge, the lower the critical slope, while larger grain size yields a higher critical slope. However, these give only an incomplete picture, and numerical simulations have become increasingly important for understanding braided rivers. Aggradation (net deposition of sediments) favors braided rivers, but

72-565: A river in Canterbury, New Zealand is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Braided river Braided streams tend to occur in rivers with high sediment loads or coarse grain sizes, and in rivers with steeper slopes than typical rivers with straight or meandering channel patterns. They are also associated with rivers with rapid and frequent variation in the amount of water they carry, i.e., with " flashy " rivers, and with rivers with weak banks . Braided channels are found in

90-410: A river will be braided or meandering are not fully understood. However, there is wide agreement that a river becomes braided when it carries an abundant supply of sediments. Experiments with flumes suggest that a river becomes braided when a threshold level of sediment load or slope is reached. On timescales long enough for the river to evolve, a sustained increase in sediment load will increase

108-602: A variety of environments all over the world, including gravelly mountain streams, sand bed rivers, on alluvial fans , on river deltas , and across depositional plains. A braided river consists of a network of multiple shallow channels that diverge and rejoin around ephemeral braid bars . This gives the river a fancied resemblance to the interwoven strands of a braid . The braid bars, also known as channel bars, branch islands, or accreting islands, are usually unstable and may be completely covered at times of high water. The channels and braid bars are usually highly mobile, with

126-423: Is an essential part of braided river formation. Numerical models suggest that bedload transport (movement of sediment particles by rolling or bouncing along the river bottom) is essential to formation of braided rivers, with net erosion of sediments at channel divergences and net deposition at convergences. Braiding is reliably reproduced in simulations whenever there is little lateral constraint on flow and there

144-447: Is not essential. For example, the Rakaia and Waitaki Rivers of New Zealand are not aggrading, due to retreating shorelines, but are nonetheless braided rivers. Variable discharge has also been identified as important in braided rivers, but this may be primarily due to the tendency for frequent floods to reduce bank vegetation and destabilize the banks, rather than because variable discharge

162-442: Is significant bedload transport. Braiding is not observed in simulations of the extreme cases of pure scour (no deposition taking place), which produces a dendritic system, or of cohesive sediments with no bedload transport. Meanders fully develop only when the river banks are sufficiently stabilized to limit lateral flow. An increase in suspended sediment relative to bedload allows the deposition of fine erosion -resistant material on

180-478: The Central Plains Water enhancement scheme. The Rakaia River is a celebrated Chinook salmon fishery. It has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports breeding colonies of the endangered black-billed gull . The river is also known for its large wrybill population which represents 73 percent of the total population. Other important bird species using

198-590: The Himalayas , which all contain young, rapidly eroding mountains. Rakaia River The Rakaia River is in the Canterbury Plains in New Zealand 's South Island . The Rakaia River is one of the largest braided rivers in New Zealand. The Rakaia River has a mean flow of 203 cubic metres per second (7,200 cu ft/s) and a mean annual seven-day low flow of 87 m /s (3,100 cu ft/s). In

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216-604: The South Island Main Trunk Railway cross the river using separate bridges. These two bridges are New Zealand's longest road and rail bridges respectively, approximately 1.75 kilometres (1.09 mi) long. A second bridge, much shorter and less used, spans the Rakaia Gorge. The Central Plains Water Trust is proposing to take up to 40 m /s (1,400 cu ft/s) of water from the Rakaia River as part of

234-542: The 1850s, European settlers named it the Cholmondeley River , but this name lapsed into disuse. The name Rakaia comes from Māori "Ō Rakaia", meaning the place where people were arranged by ranks. It rises in the Southern Alps , travelling 150 kilometres (93 mi) in a generally easterly or southeasterly direction before entering the Pacific Ocean 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Christchurch . It forms

252-405: The bed slope of the river, so that a variation of slope is equivalent to a variation in sediment load, provided the amount of water carried by the river is unchanged. A threshold slope was experimentally determined to be 0.016 (ft/ft) for a 0.15 cu ft/s (0.0042 m /s) stream with poorly sorted coarse sand. Any slope over this threshold created a braided stream, while any slope under

270-487: The formation of braided channels. Braided rivers occur in many environments, but are most common in wide valleys associated with mountainous regions or their piedmonts or in areas of coarse-grained sediments and limited growth of vegetation near the river banks. They are also found on fluvial (stream-dominated) alluvial fans . Extensive braided river systems are found in Alaska , Canada , New Zealand 's South Island , and

288-405: The inside of a curve, which accentuated the curve and in some instances, causes a river to shift from a braided to a meandering profile. A stream with cohesive banks that are resistant to erosion will form narrow, deep, meandering channels, whereas a stream with highly erodible banks will form wide, shallow channels, preventing the helical flow of the water necessary for meandering and resulting in

306-578: The river layout often changing significantly during flood events. When the islets separating channels are stabilized by vegetation, so that they are more permanent features, they are sometimes called aits or eyots. A braided river differs from a meandering river , which has a single sinuous channel. It is also distinct from an anastomosing river , which consist of multiple interweaving semi-permanent channels which are separated by floodplain rather than channel bars; these channels may themselves be braided. The physical processes that determine whether

324-407: The threshold created a meandering stream or – for very low slopes – a straight channel. Also important to channel development is the proportion of suspended load sediment to bed load . An increase in suspended sediment allowed for the deposition of fine erosion -resistant material on the inside of a curve, which accentuated the curve and in some instances, caused a river to shift from a braided to

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