August 2010 article: The Effect of Channelization on Floodplain Sediment Deposition and Subsidence Along the Pocomoke River, Maryland, by Daniel E. Kroes and Cliff R. Hupp.
Channelization’s got to be one of these things that sounded like a good idea at the time. No doubt it achieved some immediate benefits and there are places today where we probably can’t do without it. The environmental price of massive channelization, however, has been very high.
The nontidal Pocomoke River was intensively ditched and channelized by the mid-1900s, and this article documents the effects. The sediment storage function of this river has been dramatically altered by channelization. Channelization has limited contact between streamflow and the floodplain, resulting in little or no sediment retention in channelized reaches. Additionally, the drainage of floodplains by improved channels has resulted in the oxidation of stored organic sediments, resulting in subsidence. The nutrient by-product (nitrates, phosphates) of this subsidence could be a contributor to the eutrophication of downstream water bodies; in this case, the already stressed Chesapeake Bay. Wish we knew all this when somebody made the decision to channelize!
[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own!]
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