Evaluating the effects of urbanization age on the morphology of low-order urban streams in the U.S. southern Piedmont

ABSTRACT

We used space-for-time substitution, correlation, and regression analyses to study the effects of urbanization age on stream channel variables from 19 low-order urban watersheds in the southern Piedmont of the United States. The results are used to address questions regarding which variables are most responsive to urbanization age, the duration of response relative to system size, and changes in adjustment rate over time. Few morphological variables were found to be well correlated with metrics of urbanization age. The maximum-width/maximum-depth ratio (Wmax/Dmax) exhibited the best correlations to multiple metrics of urbanization age, with all correlations positive. A dearth of young urbanization ages in our dataset makes mathematically derived response times and end states for Wmax/Dmax highly uncertain. Inferences from the age range that is better represented suggest that the period of major response has occurred within the first three decades following urbanization. Subsequently, gradual increase in Wmax/Dmax appears to continue over 40 or more years. Response of channel form to urbanization and time elapsed in these low-order Piedmont streams is constrained by the presence of resistant bedrock below streambeds, a circumstance addressed by recent channel evolution models.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban stream
• channel morphology
• response time
• southern Piedmont

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the many insightful comments provided by three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.