Regime channels and their computation

It has been realized since a long time that, as a rule, an alluvial stream does not “accept” any channel provided for it by nature or men; the stream endeavours to modify the provided channel so as to create a certain channel of “its own” – which is referred to as the regime channel. Under ideal conditions, the regime channel created by the stream does not vary with time any longer. This chapter deals only with the non-braiding (“single-channel”) streams. The concept of regime channel was used exclusively in irrigation channel research and practice. The chapter considers briefly (the most prominent) two types of regime channels, R₁ and R, and their characteristic parameters. In addition to all the usual reasons for the scatter in sediment related plots, the regime-plots involve also the subjectivity in judgment on whether the stream at hand is or is not in its regime state.