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Freshwater Partners presents updated Yellowstone channel migration map to Land Use Board
Summary
Montana Freshwater Partners presented a 2024 update to the Yellowstone River channel migration map to the Livingston Land Use Board, highlighting erosion hazards, new geotechnical overlays and an interactive web map intended to help planners, landowners and infrastructure operators assess future bank retreat and avulsion risk.
Montana Freshwater Partners representative Jeanette presented the updated 2024 Yellowstone Channel Migration Map to the Livingston Land Use Board at its Feb. 24, 2025 meeting, describing how the map shows historic channel movement, areas likely to erode in the future and locations prone to avulsion during large floods.
The presentation explained that the map is an update to a 2009 product, was funded by a DNRC grant awarded in 2023 and incorporates aerial imagery dating to the 1940s. Jeanette said the map distinguishes the historic migration zone (where the channel has been), a calculated erosion buffer (100 times the average annual lateral migration rate) and avulsion hazard areas where the river is likely to cut new side channels. "Floodplain maps are regulatory. Channel migration maps are not," Jeanette told the board, adding that the migration map is intended to inform decisions rather than impose regulation.
Why it matters: the map highlights where lateral movement and bank erosion, rather than simple inundation, threaten homes, roads, bridges and utilities.…
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