New research digs into why the paths of meandering rivers change over time and how climate change could affect them.

The researchers first looked at the Mississippi River before adding other rivers on Earth and ancient riverbeds on Mars to the study.

The study specifically looks at river sinuosity, or how much rivers curve. The sinuosity of rivers changes over time, depending on the age of the river and environmental changes. Some of these changes include sediment and water supply and riverbank vegetation, all of which climate change affects.

As reported in Nature Geosciences, river sinuosity is related to the changes in how much water flows through the river. Rivers have different water levels depending on environmental factors, like precipitation levels.

The researchers looked at maps of the rivers on Earth over time by using historical data from as early as the fifth century and images from as early as 1939. They used data of 21 lowland meandering rivers.

For the ancient riverbeds on Mars, they used previously identified ancient river channels from remote sensing data.

The ancient riverbeds on Mars, untouched by human influence, gave the researchers a system to test their hypotheses on how the river systems migrated and what their sinuosity looked like by the time they dried up.

Read the full article about climate change and river paths by Molly McCrory at Futurity.