Review of River Bank Erosion Research

Riverbank erosion is a critical style of lateral channel change. It threatens the arable land, ecological environment, as well as the people’s lives and properties along the river. Through review on the research process of riverbank erosion globally, four aspects were classified and described: ①Riverbank erosion processes and mechanisms. The occurence and development of riverbank erosion is quite complicated, composed by multiple processes, which are hard to separate with each other. Therefore, the scholars have proposed a lot of theories to describe the processes. Among the theories, “Riverbank Stability Theory” has been widely recognized and developed. ②Factors of riverbank erosion. The key factors that affect riverbank erosion include hydrology conditions of the river, soil properties, geomorphology, vegetation of the river bank and meteorology. However, it should be noted that the importance of different factors in the collapse process is not equivalent and effects of the same factor on different rivers are various. ③Riverbank erosion estimation. With the tremendous improvement of quantification recently, time interval of erosion measurement is shortening continuously, while spatial scale is larger and larger. At the same time, resolution is becoming increasingly high. Erosion pin was commonly used in early studies because of its easy use and low cost, whereas remote sensing and digital photogrammetry have more advantages in modern measurement. ④Modeling of riverbank erosion. At present, the models are mainly based on the fundamental theories of hydraulics and soil mechanics, to study river bank stability. According to the review of the four aspects above, problems of recent researches and prospects of possible development in the future were discussed. The researchers should pay much attention to temporal spatial distribution of riverbank erosion first before further research. The study would be greatly helpful to the researchers for the specific river reach when choosing the proper theories as well as technologies for measurement and quantification, study the riverbank erosion through both macroscopic and microscopic views, and predict the erosion for management purpose.