Sediment transport and fluvial processes of a regulated dryland river-case of the Tarim River in China

Gauged hydrological data from the past five decades (1960s-2010s) and Google Earth images were used to examine the sediment dynamics and fluvial processes of the Tarim River, the largest inland river in a hyper-arid basin in Northwest China. The Tarim basin has undergone ever-increasing human influences in recent centuries, especially since the 1950s when large-scale land reclamation in the basin has started. The runoff and sediment load to the Tarim River followed a decreasing trend in the past decades, even though the runoff from source tributaries exhibited a gentle increase. The upper and middle reaches of the main stem river channel has been generally in aggradation, while the lower reaches followed a trend of incision. The sinuosity degree of the current river channel are distinctively lower than those of the old channels, indicating that spatial range and time frequency of the morphologic variations (lateral migration) of the river has decreased.