The Savannah River Analysis

The Savannah River “originates at the confluence of the Seneca and Tugaloo rivers in Hart County in eastern Georgia” (Seabrook). The river flows from the upper piedmont region of Georgia down to the Georgia coast where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean (Seabrook). The Savannah River forms the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. The Savannah has been of major importance for the survival of people in both Georgia and South Carolina. The mouth of the Savannah is where the city of Savannah, Georgia was founded which was the first city in the colony (Seabrook). Today, the river is the primary water source for the cities of Savannah and Augusta (Seabrook). The mouth of the river created a place to build a major shipping channel in 1917 and is still in use today (Seabrook). Additionally, Savannah, GA which was named for the river was where the movie Forest Gump was filmed (“Savannah, Georgia in …show more content…
In 2005, it had narrowed slightly to 486.68 meters (Google Earth). By 2014, the meander was 465.06 meters wide (Google Earth). This shows that the meander is continuing to narrow. This is due to the combination of erosion of the soft bank of the river and sediment deposition on the opposite bank (Bowlick et al. 124). In the case of this section of the Savannah River, the right bank of the river is where the deposition occurs while erosion occurs on the left bank. Eventually the meander will become so large that it will become cut off from the rest of the river and an oxbow will be formed (Bowlick et al. 124). This result is highly likely because this section of the Savannah River has already produced an oxbow lake once before. The impact of this oxbow lake formation will be a new contained ecosystem and the river will straighten up (Bowlick et al. 124). Additionally, a new meander might form and if the oxbow lake dries up, there could be scaring across the surface of the land (Bowlick et al.