CHANGES IN THE MORPHOLOGY OF ESOPUS CREEK, CATSKILL MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK, 2004-2016, DUE TO ANTHROPOGENIC AND NATURAL FACTORS

We updated a study by Miller and Knuepfer (2009) of historic channel change on Esopus Creek in the Catskill Mountains of New York, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the impacts of floods in 2005 and 2011 on channel morphology, and the recovery of the channel since the floods. We analyzed planform morphology from aerial imagery from 2004, 2009, 2013, and 2016 by measuring changes in sinuosity, channel index and meander migration. We also compare with the analysis of earlier channel changes by Miller and Knuepfer (2009), who analyzed aerial imagery from 1959, 1980 and 2001. The principal effects of the 2005 flood were moderate to minor meander migration and meander expansion, especially upstream of Phoenicia, NY. The principal effects of the 2011 flood were meander cutoffs, vegetation loss on channel bars, and meander expansions, which are most prominent near and upstream of Allaben. Many channel bars had revegetated by 2016, indicating a relatively rapid restabilization of the channel pattern.