Left to their own devices and given enough time, rivers wander, eroding their banks and leaving their old channels behind. It’s a behavior that engineers have to keep in mind when managing rivers or planning projects near them. But new research from The University of Texas at Austin has revealed that old methods for estimating migration rates may be overthinking it.

The research was led by the UT Jackson School of Geosciences Bureau of Economic Geology and found that the rate of river migration is directly linked to how sharp its bends are — a finding that challenges the prevailing wisdom on how river curvature and migration relate and shows that the relationship is not as complicated as previously thought, said Zoltán Sylvester, a research scientist at the bureau who led the study.

“When we look at the rivers we have studied, the sharper the bend, the tighter the bend, the faster it moves,” he said. “It’s a simple relationship.” (1)

Rivers change all the time.

Inspiring people.

People change all the time as well.

Watching rivers flow.

We wish to understand how they change.

In relation to what?

We wish to understand how we change.

In relation to what?

We wish to know how the cosmos changes.

Does it?

We wish to grasp change…

As if something is stable and unchanged…

We wish to know how the cosmos moves.

As if something is immovable and stationary.

Heraclitus said you can’t walk into the same river twice.

But no one noticed that in order to claim such a wise thing.

He should be able to speak about that (same) river…