The river regime generally refers to the mathematical relationship between the river discharge and its width, depth and slope. Thus, "river regime" describes a series of characteristic power-law relationships between discharge and width, depth and slope[1]

It is described by the fact that the discharge through a river of an approximate rectangular cross-section must, through conservation of mass, equal

where is the volumetric discharge, is the mean flow velocity, is the channel width (breadth) and is the channel depth.

Because of this relationship, as discharge increases, depth, width, and/or mean velocity must increase as well.

Empirically derived relationships between depth, slope, and velocity are:[1]

refers to a "dominant discharge" or "channel-forming discharge", which is typically the 1–2 year flood, though there is a large amount of scatter around this mean. This is the event that causes significant erosion and deposition and determines the channel morphology.

References

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  1. ^ a b Luna B. Leopold; M. Gordon Wolman; John P. Miller. (1995). Fluvial processes in geomorphology. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-68588-8.