Plain Language Summary
Riverbank erosion presents a serious risk to people and infrastructure.
These risks are becoming increasingly hard to predict because of direct
modification of the rivers by damming and bank stabilization, as well as
indirect modification by climate change and land use change.
Geomorphologists have developed scaling relationships based on watershed
characteristics; however, these relationships are very coarse and
limited by the available data. This research uses twenty years of
satellite imagery to develop the first global dataset of riverbank
erosion, which both confirms existing knowledge and opens new avenues of
research.