Channel morphological activation of large braided rivers in response to climate-driven water and sediment flux change in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

With the rising air temperature and precipitation, water and sediment flux in the Source Region of the Yangtze River have increased significantly since 2000. Nonetheless, the response of braided river morphology to climate-driven water and sediment flux change is still unknown. Water bodies of nine large braided rivers from 1990 to 2020 were extracted based on Google Earth Engine platform, and impacts of climate change on activation indices of braided river morphology were quantified. The main results are presented that a new method of braided water body extraction by combining Lowpath algorithm and Local Otsu algorithm is firstly proposed, which reduces 59% of the root mean squared error of braiding intensity in comparison with the Global Otsu method. The braiding intensity has a parabolic variation trend with the water area ratio, and the average sandbar area ratio has a negative power law trend with the water area ratio. Intra-annual channel migration intensity has an obvious temporal scale effect, which increases rapidly when the time span is less than 5 years. The warming and wetting trend led to vegetation cover increasing significantly. With the increase of runoff, water area of each braided reach has increased in both flood and non-flood season. Intra-annual channel migration intensity shows three different trends of increasing, weakening, and unchanged over time. The response of migration intensity to climate warming can be classified into three patterns in the SRYR as follows: sediment increase constrained pattern, sediment increase dominated pattern, and runoff increase dominated pattern.