Data for: Channel mobility and floodplain reworking across river planform morphologies

Source-to-sink transfer of sediment and organic carbon (OC) is regulated by river mobility. Quantifying trends in river mobility is, however, challenging due to diverse planform morphologies (e.g., meandering, braided) and measurement methods. Here, we utilize a state-of-the-art remote-sensing method applicable to all planform morphologies to quantify the mobility timescales of 80 rivers worldwide. Results show that, across the continuum from meandering to braided rivers, there is a systematic reduction in timescale of channel mobility and—to a lesser extent—the timescale of floodplain reworking. This leads to an overall decrease in the efficiency at which braided river channels rework old floodplain material compared to their meandering counterparts. Reduced reworking efficiency of braided channels stems from their relatively smaller channel-belt areas relative to their channel area. Results suggest that river-mobility timescales can help us characterize sediment and OC storage and transit times from remote sensing.

Methods
This dataset was collected using a novel framework to quantify river mobility from remotely sensed data. We use Google Earth Engine hosted Landsat 5, 7, and 8 multi-spectral images to generate channel mask time series for 80 rivers across the globe.