Nardini A. auteur aut IRD Yepez S. auteur aut IRD Mazzorana B. auteur aut IRD Ulloa H. auteur aut IRD Bejarano M. D. auteur aut IRD Laraque Alain auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access This paper proposes a systematic procedure to identify river reaches from a geomorphic point of view. Their identification traditionally relies on a subjective synthesis of multi-dimensional information (e.g., changes of slope, changes of width of valley bottom). We point out that some of the attributes adopted to describe geomorphic characters of a river (in particular sinuosity and confinement) depend on the length of reaches, while these latter are not yet identified; this is a source of ambiguity and introduces, at least conceptually, an unpleasant, implicit, iterative procedure. We introduce a new method which avoids this difficulty. Furthermore, it is simple, objective, and explicitly defined, and as such, it is automatable. The method requires to define and determine a set of intensive attributes, i.e., attributes that are independent of the segment length. The reaches are then identified by the intersection of the segmentations induced by such attributes. We applied the proposed procedure in two case studies, the Magdalena River (Colombia) and the Baker River (Chile), and investigated whether the adoption of the traditional approach for the definition of reaches would lead to a different result. We conclude that there would be no detectable differences. As such, the method can be considered an improvement in geomorphic river characterization. specialized river reaches segmentation automated approach fluvial geomorphology River Styles COLOMBIE CHILI MAGDALENA COURS D'EAU BAKER COURS D'EAU 062 064 12 10 2827 [25 p.] 2020 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010079973 10.3390/w12102827 [F B010079973] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010079973 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers20-11/010079973.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2020-12-08 2020-12-08 fdi:010079973 fre