Bastiaan Notebaert

River systems are an important part of the natural system, as a way of transport for water and sediment, and as a sediment sink. Much attention has been paid to local processes influencing these fluvial systems, but the larger regional scale has received less attention. With the increasing availability of spatial continue data, e.g. through remote sensing, new methods can be tested to analyze the spatial patterns of different variables in a continuous way. A new methodology was developed for hierarchically discretization of floodplain reaches using this methodology. In this study we will apply this methodology to some Belgian catchments and to the entire Rhone catchment. After the discretization of the floodplains into units at different scales, a regional scaled analysis will be performed on the different floodplain attributes. Regional laws will be constructed, connecting floodplain properties with each other and with environmental settings. This study will, for the first time, derive such relationships on continue data and on such scales. It is our aim to provide a necessary interdisciplinary link between different fields of earth and environmental sciences. The methodology of this study brings together aspects of remote sensing, fluvial geomorphology, hydrology and structural and tectonic geomorphology. It will allow the identification of geomorphologic and spatially relevant reaches, and to understand general controls on geomorphologic processes within these reaches.