Paul F. HudsonLeiden University | LEI
Paul F. Hudson
PhD
About
76
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1,395
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 1998 - August 2012
August 1993 - August 1998
Education
August 1991 - August 1993
Publications
Publications (76)
Global climate change is manifest by local-scale changes in precipitation and temperature patterns, including the frequency of extreme weather events (EWEs). EWEs are associated with a myriad range of adverse environmental and societal consequences, including negative impacts to agriculture and food production. This study focuses on EWEs and their...
Pressure on large fluvial lowlands has increased tremendously during the past twenty years because of flood control, urbanization, and increased dependence upon floodplains and deltas for food production. This book examines human impacts on lowland rivers, and discusses how these changes affect different types of riverine environments and flood pro...
This chapter examines modern approaches to river management as an alternative to traditional hard engineering that disconnected rivers from floodplains and degraded river environments. A range of measures are systematically reviewed to both reduce flood risk and improve river environments. The key measures reviewed includes meander bend reconnectio...
This chapter singularly focuses on the impacts of dikes (levees), including their design, management, and influence on hydrologic and fluvial sedimentary processes. Floodplain embankment commonly removes ~75% of the natural floodplain from annual flood pulse dynamics. Flood control by embankment fundamentally alters fluvial processes between, along...
Flooding of large lowland rivers is dependent upon seasonal variability in Earth’s general circulation, in addition to large-scale atmospheric teleconnections. Large lowland rivers are unique in that local-scale hydrologic and geomorphic controls also influence floodplain inundation, creating challenges to government management organizations. River...
Many of Earth’s large lowland rivers are heavily impacted by land change and hydraulic engineering to support a range of societal demands. Dams and river engineering for flood control have disconnected rivers from floodplains, reduced coastal sediment flux, and driven land subsidence of deltaic wetlands because of reduced sediment loads. Structural...
In this chapter we examine the impact of main-stem hydraulic engineering on large alluvial rivers, which are primarily developed for flood control and navigation. The lower Mississippi and Rhine Rivers provide interesting comparisons and serve as primary case studies. Each major type of hydraulic engineering is systematically examined, including ch...
This chapter reviews fundamental fluvial processes and concepts to provide a basis for subsequent chapters oriented toward understanding environmental impacts of lowland river management. The goal of this chapter is to review relevant fluvial processes from a drainage basin perspective, including headwater, transfer, and deposition zones. Human imp...
Pressure on large fluvial lowlands has increased tremendously during the past twenty years because of flood control, urbanization, and increased dependence upon floodplains and deltas for food production. This book examines human impacts on lowland rivers, and discusses how these changes affect different types of riverine environments and flood pro...
The final chapter on human impacts to lowland rivers logically ends at the basin terminus, at the coast. Large flood basins and deltas are the most challenging environments to manage because of being impacted by ground subsidence and coastal storm surge events, particularly large populations in delta cities. Artificial floodwater diversion mirrors...
Having systematically reviewed a comprehensive range of management measures across a wide range of rivers this chapter provides an overview of lessons learned to inform future management strategies. Key lessons are elucidated that relates to (i) urban flood management, (ii) the role of floodplain sedimentology in the design of effective hydraulic i...
Pressure on large fluvial lowlands has increased tremendously during the past twenty years because of flood control, urbanization, and increased dependence upon floodplains and deltas for food production. This book examines human impacts on lowland rivers, and discusses how these changes affect different types of riverine environments and flood pro...
Millions of dams fragment and degrade Earth’s riparian landscapes. This chapter examines linkages between dams, rivers, and the environment and is subdivided into three sections, including riparian impacts of dams, dam removal, and reservoir sediment management strategies. The latter is crucial to sustain downstream fluvial environments and water r...
The development and evolution of islands along the lower Mississippi River were examined over a 50 year period, between 1965 and 2015. Fluvial islands were historically a fundamental component of the riparian corridor, serving as important ecological habitat for aquatic and terrestrial species. Their degradation was associated with channel engineer...
The nation’s costliest natural disasters continue to be caused by flooding. Every year, with enormous personal and financial cost to U.S. citizens, floods damage crops, infrastructure, businesses, personal property and, most unfortunately, cost American lives.1 Americans are quick to forget such disasters, however, in part because they’re frequentl...
Large lowland rivers and deltas with high concentrations of human activities are vulnerable to different forms of global environmental change and depend upon effective flood management. This study utilizes the approaches and experiences of the Lower Mississippi (Louisiana) and lower Rhine Rivers (the Netherlands) to examine the development of integ...
The floodplain geomorphology of large lowland rivers is intricately related to aquatic ecosystems dependent upon flood pulse dynamics. The alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula) is native to the Lower Mississippi River and dependent upon floodplain backwater areas for spawning. In this study we utilize a geospatial approach to develop a habitat suita...
Internationalization has been an important concept in higher education over the past two decades. The way that internationalization is manifest has consequences to academic disciplines, including geography. A new system of liberal arts colleges in the Netherlands has created opportunities for interdisciplinary education, representing a departure fr...
Fluvial depositional landforms are created from combinations of specific sedimentary processes and depositional environments. Two major categories of fluvial sedimentary processes are overbank and lateral accretion mechanisms, influenced by drainage basin and local hydraulic controls. Because of their connection to drainage basins, fluvial landform...
Water engineering involves a complex range of activities essential to the wellbeing of society and nature. The activities involved in water engineering include hydraulic engineering of coastal and freshwater environments, the latter primarily from a drainage basin perspective. Engineering of alluvial rivers requires an intricate knowledge of hydrau...
In this study, we document sedimentary characteristics of overbank flood deposits associated with the epic A.D. 2011 flood along the Lower Mississippi River (southern USA) and directly compare the findings to sedimentation from a comparable flood event in 1973, with the general purpose of understanding how extreme floods contribute to floodplain de...
Knowing the electron irradiation effect is critical in understanding the behavior of materials under the examination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Elastic collision described by the Rutherford scattering model is introduced into molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to account for the interaction between incident electron and target atom...
Embanked floodplains are the status-quo where humans are a major component of the environment, especially across Europe and North America. Effective management of embanked rivers requires a comprehensive knowledge of past and present-day geomorphic processes, including sediment transport and channel and floodplain dynamics. Many approaches to manag...
This volume provides a comprehensive perspective on geomorphic approaches to management of lowland alluvial rivers in North America and Europe. Many lowland rivers have been heavily managed for flood control and navigation for decades or centuries, resulting in engineered channels and embanked floodplains with substantially altered sediment loads a...
Recognition of the failure of old perspectives on river management and the need to enhance environmental sustainability has stimulated a new approach to river management over the past couple of decades. The manner that river restoration and integrated management are implemented, however, requires a case study approach that takes into account the in...
Hydrologic connectivity is fundamental to understanding floodplain processes along meandering river corridors. This study contributes to understanding hydrologic connectivity by utilizing a high resolution Light Detection and Ranging DEM with a new GIS-based approach for identifying the precise elevation of flood stage. The method created a high-re...
The geomorphic effectiveness of extreme events has long been a
fundamental topic within Earth sciences. The 2011 flood along the lower
Mississippi River (3.2 x 10-6 km2) was an extreme event and presented an
ideal opportunity to consider controls on the magnitude and pattern of
floodplain sedimentation. The study reach was located between Natchez,...
Introduction: River flooding occurs as high water inundates the adjacent floodplain, and is controlled by a combination of discreet processes operating at local and watershed scales. A floodplain is the relatively flat alluvial landform adjacent to a river that is more or less related to the modern flood regime (Wolman and Leopold,1957; Nanson and...
The downstream fining of fluvial sediments is a fundamental tenet of drainage systems and, for decades, has been the subject of considerable research. Most of this research has focused on variability in channel-bed material. Other sedimentological components such as channel bars and banks, however, represent distinctively different processes occurr...
Flood management alters fundamental fluvial processes that have geomorphic consequences for rivers and floodplains. The Lower Mississippi and Rhine Rivers (The Netherlands) are two important examples of intensively regulated large rivers. Understanding the magnitude and direction of change caused by flood management requires a long-term perspective...
The Texas Gulf Coastal Plain is a large region with a complex landscape that drains into the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Over the past five decades there have been numerous studies pertaining to various aspects of the physical geography of the Texas coastal plain. Unfortunately there has been little attempt to provide a comprehensive summary of th...
Large lowland river valleys include a variety of floodplain environments that represent opportunities and constraints for human activities. This study integrates extensive field observations and geomorphic data with analysis of satellite remote sensing data to examine spatial relations between land use/land cover (LULC) and floodplain environments...
The Mississippi is the largest river in North America and is considered one of the most humanly manipulated large river system on Earth. Analysis of a series of high-resolution hydrographic surveys documents the morphologic adjustment of the Lower Mississippi River thalweg to land use changes and engineering modifications from the late nineteenth c...
This chapter discusses the physical and biological features of five major Mexican rivers-the Río Pánuco, Usumacinta-Grijalva rivers, Río Candelaria, the Yaqui, and the Río Conchos. Five additional rivers-the Chihuahuan Desert's Río Salado; the Río Tamesí, which joins the Río Pánuco near its mouth; the Río Fuerte, which flows through some of the con...
The Huasteca of eastern Mexico is the northern extent of prehistoric Mesoamerican complex culture. In comparison to other major Mesoamerican culture regions, much less is known about the physical environment of the Huasteca. This paper examines the structure, scale, and dynamics of floodplain environments in the lower Pánuco basin, the major physic...
The Huasteca of eastern Mexico is the northern extent of prehistoric Mesoamerican complex culture. In comparison to other major Mesoamerican culture regions, much less is known about the physical environment of the Huasteca. This paper examines the structure. scale. and dynamics of floodplain environments in the lower Panuco basin, the major physic...
This paper addresses multiple semi‐automated methods for discriminating landuse/landcover (LULC) classification in the absence of field data. The study site comprises a heterogeneous mixture of physiographic landscape elements in a remote area of eastern Mexico. Classification of modified Tasseled Cap transformations as well as a hybrid unsupervise...
ABSTRACT Although large tropical rivers transport the majority of suspended sediment to the oceans, because of a lack of adequate data there have been few detailed studies of sediment transport and its relationship to drainage basin processes. This study examines sediment transport variability in the lower Panuco basin of east-central Mexico using...
The Colville basin drains the North Slope of Alaska and is one of several large Arctic river systems located within permafrost. The timing and style of fluvial processes in the earth's permafrost regions differ from those occurring in midlatitude settings. Moreover, in comparison to temperate-zone systems, rivers located entirely within permafrost...
This study examines spatial variations in natural levee deposits within the lower reaches of a large coastal plain drainage system. The Pánuco basin (98,227 km2) drains east-central Mexico, and is an excellent setting to examine the influence of watershed and local controls on the morphology and sedimentology of natural levees. Although many fluvia...
Determining the extent of flooding is an important role of the hydrological research community and provides a vital service to planners and engineers. For large river systems located within distant settings it is practical to utilize a remote sensing approach. This study combines a remote sensing and geomorphic approach to delineate the extent of a...
Although large tropical river systems transport the majority of the world's runoff and sediment, few studies have examined the dynamics of suspended sediment transport in this setting. This includes Mexico, which contains two of the larger river basins draining into the Gulf of Mexico. This study provides a detailed analysis of discharge (Q) and su...
Floodplains exhibit a variety of styles because of the dominance of specific fluvial processes. This study examines the spatial diversity of floodplain styles in the lower Pánuco basin, a large river system that drains east-central Mexico and empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Tampico, Tamaulipas. Changes in mean stream power (W m-2) and surficial...
Floodplains exhibit a variety of styles because of the dominance of specific fluvial processes. This study examines the spatial diversity of floodplain styles in the lower Pánuco basin, a large river system that drains east-central Mexico and empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Tampico, Tamaulipas. Changes in mean stream power (W m-2) and surficial...
This study analyzes the pool-riffle morphology of the Lower Mississippi River within the context of an actively migrating meandering river. Historic hydrographic surveys (1:20,000) from the late 1800s and early 1900s document the natural channel morphology of the Lower Mississippi, and are used to construct a 1225-km profile of the channel thalweg....
Channel migration and meander-bend morphology are examined for the lower
Mississippi River between 1877 and 1924, prior to channel cutoffs,
revetments, and change in sediment regime. The spatial pattern of
meander-bend migration coincides with differences in flood-plain
deposits. Migration of meander bends averaged 45.2 m/yr in the upper
alluvial v...
Spatial and temporal variations in watershed characteristics provide insight into the controls on discharge, sediment transport, and channel morphology for the Río Panuco, Mexico, the sixth largest (98,227 km2) river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Although there has been considerable study of Gulf Coastal Plain river systems within the United Sta...
Suspended sediment transport effectiveness was examined near the mouths of three large impounded rivers (Rio Grande, Brazos,
and Pearl Rivers) in differing precipitation regimes in the U.S. Gulf Coastal Plain. Magnitude and frequency analysis of suspended
sediment transport was performed by examining the effectiveness of both discharge and time in...
Floodplains exhibit a variety of styles because of the dominance of specific fluvial processes. This study examines the spatial diversity of floodplain styles in the lower Pánuco basin, a large river system that drains east-central Mexico and empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Tampico, Tamaulipas. Changes in mean stream power (W m-2) and surficial...
Projects
Projects (2)
completing monograph about large lowland rivers: flooding, management, links to sedimentology and impacts of hydraulic engineering
We hereby invite you to submit a manuscript to our special issue of Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (ESPL) entitled "Lowland rivers: Geomorphology, sustainable management, and ecosystem services." A description of the theme is included below.
In addition to fluvial geomorphologists, we are also soliciting manuscripts from scholars working at the interface of geomorphology with ecology, biogeochemistry, and hydraulic engineering.
All manuscripts will be subject to rigorous peer review according to ESPL conventions.
We kindly request that you notify us of your intention to participate in the special issue. The deadline for notification of interest is March 1 (with tentative title). The deadline for manuscript submission is August 1, 2021. We aim to have the special issue published by late 2021.
We hope to receive your notification of interest soon, and please let us know should you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Guest editors
Paul F. Hudson, Leiden University, the Netherlands (p.f.hudson@luc.leidenuniv.nl)
Edward Park, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (edward.park@nie.edu.sg)
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Lowland rivers are unique geomorphic and hydrologic environments that support distinctive ecosystem processes and a range of human activities. The societal and ecological importance of lowland rivers is vastly disproportionate to their modest global extent. Many lowland rivers have been adversely impacted by human activities, including upstream land use, dams, and hydraulic engineering in support of flood control, navigation, settlement and agriculture. These problems are accentuated towards the coast where fluvial-deltaic landscapes are being drowned by sea level rise exacerbated by subsidence driven by sediment starvation and inappropriate land use.
Recognition of degraded fluvial lowlands and their societal importance has driven new “integrated management” approaches that aim to sustain or restore lowland rivers and floodplains. Appropriate implementation of such measures requires a comprehensive understanding of the ‘natural’ system, including linkages between geomorphic, ecosystem, and sedimentary dynamics. Integrated management approaches commonly utilize new or redesigned hydraulic infrastructure to explicitly alter hydrologic and sedimentary processes (i.e., “work with nature”). Such measures are often driven by a need to reduce human flood risk and mutually enhance riparian ecosystems.
The purpose of this special issue of ESPL is to provide a state-of-the-science perspective to the sustainable management of lowland rivers from a fluvial geomorphic perspective. The special issue will draw upon case studies from a broad latitudinal range of settings – spanning the tropics to higher latitudes – that includes modeling, field, and GIS/RS based approaches.
