An elongate or crescent-shaped body of standing
water formed in a former channel of a meandering river.
Oxbow lakes form when a typically strongly curved channel is
abandoned when its neck is cut off, usually during a high-flow
interval in the stream, and the ends of the bend are silted up.
Meandering rivers may develop many strongly curved
oxbows, where exaggerated U-shaped bends isolate teardropshaped
parcels of land only connected to the riverbank by
narrow necks. These necks may slowly or rapidly erode until
the river takes a newer, shorter course and the old curved segment
is abandoned. The oxbow lakes then evolve from channels
with the former depth of the river but gradually get filled
in by silt during flood stages of the main river. Some river systems
have thousands of oxbows and oxbow lakes, and the
entire floodplain may be marked by variably sedimented
oxbow lakes and former oxbow lakes, perhaps only marked
by curved patterns of differently aged vegetation.
See also RIVER SYSTEM.
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