Report on the International Workshop River Deltas: Evolution, Environmental, Challenges and Sustainable Management

The most important landform produced where a river enters a body of standing water is known as a delta. The term is normally applied to a depositional plain formed by a river at its mouth, with the implication that sediment accumulation at this position results in an irregular progradation of the shoreline. Their evolution and shapes are depending on 1 characteristics within the drainage basin that provides the sediment climate, lithology, tectonic stability and basin size 2 properties of the transporting agent, such as river slope, velocity, discharge and sediment size and 3 energy that exists along the shoreline, including factors such as wave characteristics, longitudinal currents and tidal range. The combination of these numerous variables tends to create deltas that occur in a complete spectrum of form and depositional style. Deltas are distributed over all portions of the Earths surface. They form along the coasts of every landmass and occur in all climatic regimes and geologic settings. As final parts of river courses towards the seas and oceans, deltas are under the influence of both rivers and seas. This is why, for a better understanding, they should be considered as systems of large rivers deltas coasts seasocean macro-systems. Being at the contact between land and sea, deltas can be considered as one of the most reactive and frail continental systems, as are subject to swift changes at any variation of rivers andor seas forcings.