A small‐scale flood plain

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Abstract
A miniature, 9 m‐wide floodplain, developed along a gravel‐washing effluent stream, shows features such as levées, crevasse splays and floodbasins which compare with their larger‐scale counterparts. For sediments deposited overbank, median size decreases exponentially with distance from the channel whilst sorting increases, with coarser sediment on the outside of a meander bend. Overbank flows are only a few grain diameters in depth near the channel. This study shows potentially useful systematic relationships in floodplain sediment textures, but it involves only one of a possible variety of floodplain types dominated by overbank sedimentation. This suggests that further exploration of overbank depositional processes is desirable as an aid to field interpretation.