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1 School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK j.alexander{at}uea.ac.uk
2 School of Geography and Environmental Management, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK Susan.Marriott{at}uwe.ac.uk
Floodplains are of major socio-economic and ecological importance, ranging as they do from intensely inhabited and industrialized areas, through high-productivity agricultural land to sites of extraordinary biodiversity and biological productivity that have suffered little management or other human intervention such as some of the flooded forests of the Amazon Basin. Natural floodplains vary in character depending on their climatic setting, catchment size and character and, as a consequence, discharge character and sediment load. Biological communities are sensitive to these variations and the major floodplains of the world may be dominated by plant communities with very different evolutionary histories. On more local scales, there may be much closer ecological, if not taxonomic similarities. Floodplain character has changed through geological time because of the evolution of land plants and animals, and changing atmospheric chemistry, global climate and sea level.
Over the relatively recent past (c. 50 ka) human activity has brought about rapid change through, for example, forest clearance, water use and channel engineering. This book examines both natural features of floodplains whilst taking into account the human impacts on them. This demands a multi-disciplinary approach and documents the evolution of recent research.
Floodplain deposits reflect the diversity of mechanisms by which sediment is transported and deposited. These include transfer from the channel during overbank flow, by slope wash from terraces and valley sides on distal parts of a floodplain and by aeolian processes. Apart from colluvial deposits at the edges of a floodplain, most of the material deposited is generally fine-grained
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This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
