Starved versus alluvial river bedforms: an experimental investigation

Abstract Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the formation of river bedforms under sediment supply‐limited conditions, i.e. when a motionless substratum is bared by the dynamics of the mobile sediments. Three series of experiments were organized in a laboratory flume by fixing all the hydrodynamic and morphodynamic parameters but varying the thickness of the initial layer of mobile sediments which covers the rigid bottom of the flume. At the end of all the experiments, which lasted for the same amount of time, the formation of transverse sand dunes was observed. For decreasing , the rigid bottom of the flume was bared progressively earlier during the experiment and the measurements showed a clear tendency of the bedforms to lengthen, i.e. to increase their crest‐to‐crest distance. Moreover, under strong supply limitation, the two‐dimensional transverse dunes turned into three‐dimensional barchanoid forms and into isolated barchan dunes characterized by an abrupt reduction in bedform heights. A two‐dimensional Fourier analysis of the bottom profile was performed, providing the amplitude of the main streamwise and spanwise harmonic components of the bottom morphology as a function of . © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.