Kory Konsoer
Louisiana State University, LA·Earth & Environmental Science
When a winding river loops back on itself, it can cut off a bend of its old channel. That abandoned bend may stay open as a crescent-shaped lake, called an oxbow lake, or it may fill in with sediment and disappear.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
- Topics
oxbow lakes
meandering rivers
meander cutoff
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the initial junction angle of a river meander cutoff controls how fast sediment plugs its entrance and whether an oxbow lake forms, using recent cutoffs on the West Fork White River, Indiana.
- Map the geometry and timing of sediment fill in cutoff channels using multibeam bathymetry (sonar seafloor mapping), sub-bottom profiling (imaging of buried layers) and sediment core analysis.
- Simulate how river bifurcations evolve after cutoff with morphodynamic models, which track how flow and sediment reshape channels, to find which geometries speed up sediment plugging.
- Estimate pollutant storage within oxbow lakes in collaboration with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
More about the research
Which outcome happens matters. Oxbow lakes trap pollutants and provide unusual habitats for plants and animals. Yet scientists cannot yet reliably predict which cutoff bends will become lakes.
Why it matters
Oxbow lakes store pollutants and host distinctive habitats, so knowing which river cutoffs will become lakes could help environmental agencies and river managers anticipate where contaminants collect and where valuable floodplain habitats will form. Estimates of pollutant storage, produced with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, could inform water-quality management along meandering rivers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Czuba
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether fine sediment accumulation in streambeds can be predicted from bankfull flow conditions across a wide range of U.S. landscapes, by analyzing a U.S. EPA stream dataset.
Samuel Munoz
Northeastern University, MA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Establish a long-term floodplain observatory, using environmental sensors and sediment cores, to monitor how floods deposit sediment along a lowland river.
Enrica Viparelli
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how sedimentation rates and grain sizes vary across the Congaree National Park floodplain after the Hurricane Helene flood, using field sediment sampling.
The school
Louisiana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $431M a year on research, 323 research doctorates a year.
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