its course. All streams are sinuous at some time in their geologic history over some part of their length. The sinuosity of a meandering stream has a tendency to approach a critical state at which the opposing forces which create and cut off meanders interact in such a way that sinuosity fluctuates around a constant mean, regardless of the original conditions. [1]

The term derives from the Meander River located in present-day Turkey and known to the Ancient Greeks as Μαίανδρος Maiandros (Latin: Maeander),[2] characterised by a very convoluted path along the lower reach. As such, even in Classical Greece (and in later Greek thought) the name of the river had become a common noun meaning anything convoluted and winding, such as decorative patterns or speech and ideas, aswell as the geomorphological feature.[3]Strabo said: "... its course is so exceedingly winding that everything winding is called meandering."[4]

The Meander River is located south of Izmir, east of the ancient Greek town of Miletus, now, Milet, Turkey. It flows through a graben in the Menderes Massif, but has a flood plain much wider than the meander zone in its lower reach. Its modern Turkish name is the Büyük Menderes River.

The technical description of a meandering watercourse is termed meander geometry or meander planform geometry.[5] It is characterized as an irregular waveform. Ideal waveforms, such as a sine wave, are one line thick, but in the case of a stream the width must be taken into consideration. The bankfull width is the distance across the bed at an average