Meandering River Valley Erosion

A river almost never carves a straight line — its bends grow, wander and occasionally cut themselves off, and the ground beneath it slowly widens into a valley as a result. This simulation models a simplified alluvial river on an initially flat plateau: each bend migrates sideways at a rate proportional to its own curvature (the same feedback that drives real meander growth), gradually scouring a floodplain into the surrounding rock, until a loop swings far enough to trigger a neck cutoff and strand an oxbow lake. Adjust erosion rate and meander mobility to see how a landscape's river valley actually forms over geologic time, rather than appearing all at once.