Evolutionary trajectory of a low-energy river during the Holocene: the Charente River between Angoulême and Saintes (south-west of France)
Résumé
Low-energy rivers are boring, mundane, and unchanging. As a result, they are rarely identified, inventoried, and studied. Their long-term evolutionary trajectory and how they have responded to past environmental changes and will adapt to future ones remain challenging and unanswered questions. In the lowlands of southwestern Atlantic France, we identified a set of low-energy streams with discontinuous anastomosing patterns preserved at the basin scale. This type of river has a strong patrimony character because anastomosed pattern became very rare in Europe under anthropic pressure notably after Middle Ages. This is the case of the Charente River up to Saintes which is the subject of this presentation. We will focus on channel and island changes as well as the sedimentary record of the alluvial plain during the Holocene with a specific focus on the last 300 years.