Morphodynamic Modeling of River-Dominated Deltas: A Review and Future Perspectives

Abstract

River deltas are a compelling target for numerical simulation because they contain seemingly organized patterns and shapes at a variety of scales. For instance, most river-dominated deltas, regardless of size, have triangular to semi-circular planform shapes, channel networks, and channel bifurcations. The common presence of these features among most deltas in the world (Caldwell et al., 2019; Nienhuis et al., 2020) suggests there are consistent underlying physical processes controlling delta form and behavior. In this review, we discuss how numerical modeling, and more specifically a type of modeling focused on the morphodynamic feedback, has helped explore some of these key physical processes over the last 15 years.