Largescale ripples of the lower Wabash River

Abstract

ABSTRACTLargescale ripples in the meandering lower Wabash River of Illinois and Indiana, U.S.A., include scroll bars and three dunelike bed forms (dunes, sand waves, and transverse bars). Scroll bars are lobate crested, asymmetrical in stream‐wise vertical profile, usually solitary, and oriented approximately normal to local channel strike. They form by passive flow expansion downchannel from locally emergent topographic highs, face and lie near inner banks of meander bends, enjoy a high preservation potential as leveelike ridges of ridge‐and‐swale topography, and migrate only during relatively low stream discharges, when water depth over bar crests is less than 0·5 m.Dunes correspond to dunes of the flow‐regime classification and rarely are solitary or superimposed. Sand waves may be symmetrical or asymmetrical, are always superimposed by dunes, occur in depths greater than 4 m and in bed material coarser than 1 mm mean size, and develop at bankfull and flood flows. Transverse bars migrate in depths less than 5 m in straight reaches and near inner banks of bends, display crestal dunes, and correspond to the bars of Costello (1974) and to the sand waves of Boothroyd (1969). Hydrodynamic regimes of scroll bars and transverse bars differ from that of dunes. The omnipresence of dunes upon stoss‐sides of sand waves confirms the existence of an equilibrium superimposition of dunelike largescale ripples.Depth‐velocity‐size diagrams appear to be a valid representation of empirical stability fields of dunelike largescale ripples in deep unsteady nonuniform aqueous flows. Stability fields of dunes and sand waves overlap greatly. Velocity profiles demonstrate an absence of leeside flow separation over dunes and an appearance (rare) over transverse bars only when the ratio of trough depth to crest depth exceeds two.Dune stratification displays (1) largescale trough cross‐strata, (2) thinning of sets as bed‐material size increases, and (3) an orientation within 20° of local channel strike. Transverse bars show avalanche sets up to 2 m thick, with reactivation surfaces. Scroll bars display thick avalanche sets separated by reactivation structures consisting of erratically oriented smallscale trough cross‐strata. Avalanche sets of scroll bars and of transverse bars are oriented 50–150° from and within 50° of, respectively, local channel strike.