Geospatial Modeling of River Systems

Within the context of fluvial systems, geospatial modeling of river networks consists of describing certain patterns in the geographical or geomorphological “fabric” along the course of rivers or streams and correlating these patterns to physical, ecological, biological and chemical processes in the river/stream system’s aquatic environment. Patterns may consist of different sets of similar sequences of geomorphological characteristics, sediment substrate type or flow velocity fields. These patterns will influence processes by defining, for example, behaviors in river ice formation or breakup (physical), fish habitat types (ecological) and transformations in water-quality constituents (biological and chemical). In this special issue of Geospatial Modeling of River Systems, we invited papers to present models and data that correlate geographic/geomorphic features of a river or stream system with physical/ecological/biological/chemical processes in the lotic aquatic environment