Morphometry as tool to trace out the genealogy of oxbow lake

Morphometry of oxbow lakes is widely used as a tool for knocking the evolutionary history of geomorphology and hydraulics of the region concerned. Oxbow lakes are the treasury of abundant geomorphological records of yesteryears which could serve as important keys to the past fluvial environment. But in terms of morphometric magnitudes, today’s oxbow lakes differ significantly from the then river from which they were originated. That is why identifying the parent river and gauging the dimensions of past morphology of the parent river of the oxbow lakes is an important issue of fluvial geomorphology. That is why the present paper searches parent–daughter umbilical linkage between an oxbow lake and adjacent river and designs quantitative measures to find out the degree of similitude between an oxbow lake and adjacent rivers. We processed planimetric morphological variables (distance, width, amplitude, the radius of curvature and orientation angle) of 126 oxbow lakes and adjacent 13 rivers using statistical and mathematical tools. We found that there is a strong morphometric association between oxbow lakes and their parent river. Finally, we conclude that morphometrics of an oxbow lake can successfully be used for identifying its parent river. So, we suggested five indices to ascertain the degree of similitude for confirming the parent–daughter umbilical linkage between oxbow lake and adjacent river.