Classification of rivers according to width I'm looking for a simple classification of rivers according to their width. In which size categories should I split them? This may usually be done according to catchment area but I'm more interested in the width at one spot of the river. I'm interested in the width at a given spot and point in time, not in the variability in width along the river or in different seasons.

Ideally this classification would make some sense (e.g. rivers smaller than x meter width are usually not used for ship traffic, rivers larger than x meter are commonly not crossed by bridges, etc.) or is commonly used in official documents (preferably in Europe).

Intuitively I would classified them according to the following but without much reasoning behind it:


below 2m (can be jumped)
3-10m (may be used for leisure water sport)
11-25m (smaller commercial vessels?)
26-50m (large commercial vessels?)
51-100m (may still be bridged)
over 100m (very large rivers, close to flowing into the sea)
The Rosgen river classification contains - besides slope, entrenchment and sinuosity - the width. But it is mostly applicable to natural rivers, not so much artificial waterways ...

http://extension.umass.edu/riversmart/fgm-assessment-methods/rosgen-classification-natural-rivers-natural-channel-design

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosgen_Stream_Classification

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/application-of-the-rosgen-stream-classification-to-north-carolina

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_024290.pdf