Hi Rosanna, unfortunately not. Meander migration depends on:

slope, granulometry of the bedload, water discharge, vegetation growth on the banks.... among other parameters. You need at least a few datings to constrain the displacement trend (images times series or 14C datings depending on the migration speed of the meanders).

Nevertheles, you can establish relative chronology based on meander cut but without time constrain.

Sincerely your,

Fred

Indeed you can't, but if you can work on the floodplain evolution, you could do some relative dating. If your abandoned channels and the rest of the floodplain is vegetated, you can always used dendrochronology to constrain your chronology.

Thank's unfortunately it is not easy to do a new expedition in thsi very fare Russian area (near Tunguska site)!

The best you could hope for is that it's recent and caught on aerial photography otherwise... It looks to me like these were lakes at one time before they eroded a channel, are they moraine lakes?

Many workers have overlain in a GIS serial historical sources to reconstruct river movements over the last 150 years, especially for meanders (e.g. see my review paper of most methods in ‘The Measurement of River Bank Erosion and Lateral Channel Change: a Review’, published in: Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, vol. 18 (9), 777-821). DOI is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/esp.3290180905 . I can send you a full copy if you can’t get a copy.

Typical data-sources for meander position dates include sequences of satellite images, aerial photographs (including Google Earth), ground photographs, early and modern surveys, published maps (Google Earth?) and surveyor’s notes. Some of these sources may need checking for accuracy first. The method simply involves stacking in a GIS the stream course plots for different dates at the same scale. The differences in position of superimposed river courses can then be converted to meander migration rate.

If you have dateable vegetation evidence on the floodplain (e.g. trees) then, as Hickin and Nanson’s work demonstrated, you could complete a dendro-chronological survey of the floodplain to ascertain the rate of meander development. Their work was brilliantly innovative!

Yes I believe! I have some dendrochronological data of trees close to the Cheko lake but they were not taken for this aim, but because trying to undersatand the age of the lake itself that possibly is linked to the 1908 Tunguska impact (of a meteorite or part of a comet..still on debate). Probably Russian researcher can have air photos or satellite images that could help to undestand the development of the area.

I'll be very glad to have a copy of the paper, I can't have by web.

Greetings, Rosanna