Paraná River Floodplain

Position of center of photo (Lat/Long): [-29.14/-59.4]

The Paraná River ranges up to 3 kilometers wide along the reach illustrated in this image. The main channel is deep enough to allow smaller ocean-going ships to pass north to the capital city of Asunción, Paraguay, fully 1,200 kilometers inland and well out of the image.

The river’s dark brown shading indicates a heavy load of muddy sediment; smaller side channels also carry this mud. Numerous lakes are typical on active floodplains, and appear here as irregular bodies of water. Some appear brown, indicating that they probably have been refilled during recent rises and floods of the active channels.

The Paraná floodplain occupies the entire image; it is so wide - 18 kilometers in this view - that its banks are not visible. Numerous curved, meandering channels are the most prominent characteristic of the floodplain, indicating prior positions of the river and its channels. As riverbeds move laterally by natural processes, they leave remnants of their channels, which appear as lakes and finally fill with mud. This is an excellent image for illustrating these meander forms.

From a geological standpoint, it is interesting that almost all of the old channels are similar in curvature to today’s side channels. However, almost none of them seem to show prior positions of the main, wide Paraná channel.