Riverbank Erosion: Basic Concepts and Approaches

The first chapter being the initial focus of this book inherently incorporates the concepts, ideas, and approaches to the river bank erosion. The perspective of bank erosion hazard studies is explored through different popular approaches like the natural approach, anthropogenic approach, hazard approach, and rational approach. The works at the global scale indicate that the majority of the works are carried out in the recent decade (2010–2020) following the natural process approach. Interestingly, the European and North American traditions depict that riverbank erosion studies have been carried out since the 1970s with a great emphasis on the scenario of Asia, Africa, and Australia. Moreover, to make it an integrated and systematic study, the natural and social dimensions of riverbank erosion are analyzed side by side. The various spatial attributes (site, reach, and catchment) and temporal scales (ahistorical, short, medium, and long) at which the previous works have been carried out are taken into consideration.