Channel deformations of the Irkut river in the Tunkinskaya depression

Abstract

We examine the intrasecular morphodynamics of the Irkut river within the Tunkinskaya depression and the associated partitions between depressions. An analysis is made of the changes in the channel pattern in plan, and a typization is provided for the channel processes for three time intervals: 1914, 1975 and 2015. We identified eleven morphodynamically uniform reaches of the channel: three, one and seven of them are of the adapted, incised and broad-floodplain types, respectively. The types of morphodynamical development of the river are systematized, and reaches with a different degree of deformation are identified within the most mobile broad-band segment of the river in conditions of free meandering. It is ascertained that the reaches of the braided type and the reach with sharp loop-like bends are the most stable, which is, in either case, due to the consolidation of vegetation by the high floodplain which made it possible to stabilize the movement of the channel in plan. The most strongly altered reaches are determined, where river channel displacements were accompanied by a complete change of the morphodynamical types of bends; the macrobends mainly experienced a regular breakthrough or were complicated by lower-order bends. We identified the reaches with lower-order (local) changes where the development of the bends (for the most part, of the loop-like type) changed into a new evolutionary cycle). We determined the role played by the influence of the territory’s geologo-geomorphological structure, hydrological conditions and natural processes of channel evolution on the dynamics of homogeneous reaches, and on morphological changes within them. The period of the most significant channel deformations, from 1914 to 1976, was determined, which is accounted for by an enhancement in anthropogenic pressure and by the associated increase in suspended load, and the period of decrease in the magnitude of manifestations of channel deformations from 1976 to 2015.