To What Extent Are Floods Necessary For The Formation Of River Landforms

To what extent are floods necessary for the formation of river landforms?

River landforms are formed by either depositional methods or erosional methods, and the landforms that floods are necessary for are formed by depositional methods, but there are landforms that are formed by erosional methods where floods are not needed to create these landforms. The main landforms that are formed by floods are levees, floodplains and oxbow lakes. The most obvious example of a landform where flooding is necessary is a floodplain, as the fundamental part of a floodplain is that is formed when a river floods and spills onto the adjacent land and deposit the sediment, and if the river didn’t exceed it capacity to contain the water there
would be no way that the sediment would be able to get to the land and the floodplain would not be formed.
Whereas for some landforms a flood and the higher discharge associated with it are the opposite thing you need to create the landform, this is the case with deltas, where a slower moving body of water is necessary so that the sediment could be deposited, but if there was a flood this sediment would leave the river when it went over the sides in the flood and the sediment wouldn’t be able to be deposited to form a delta.
Another landform where floods help with the formation is levees where the sediment is dropped closer to the river channel during a flood and goes to the edges which creates levees to help prevent against flooding in the future, the flood is important as without the higher discharge associated with the floods the material would just be deposited on the rivers bed meaning it would become heightened and therefore it would increase the frequency and volume of water of floods.
A landform where flooding is not required for the formation is a meander, this is to do with the river trying to take the path with the least resistance and occurs inside the rivers channel so does not require flooding to create them, yet despite this when there is high discharge it increases the rate of erosion and the meander is created quicker and creates centripetal force towards the banks which causes undercutting to create the outer concave
bank.
An oxbow lake is a landform that is difficult to categorise as flooding is needed but also needed to stop occurring for the formation on an oxbow lake. The lakes require the floods and increased discharge to break the neck of the meander so that the lake can be formed but then after that it doesn’t matter to the lake whether there is a flood or not as although they are still connected but then it needs to flood to stop so that deposition can occur and the lake can become separated from the channel and become a lake.
In conclusion flooding is very important for the formation of some landforms but in most depositional landforms it has a role to play even if it is a small but contributing factor, whereas with erosional landforms it has no effect as those are usually created by a change in the gradient of a river.