Distributions of river bank erosion in cold-climate regions identified using novel real-time sensors

River functions and morphology are strongly impacted by the amount of sediments in a river, which are often supplied by river bank erosion. To better understand rivers as a whole it is thus important to know the timing and causes of river bank erosion, which are difficult to assess with current sensor technology. Especially in cold-climate regions where a large variety of processes occur that contribute to river bank erosion, identifying the timing and causes of bank erosion is challenging. We employed sensors, originally developed for the agricultural sector, in a novel way to obtain a one-year dataset of soil moisture, soil temperature and soil movement in real-time and with a high temporal resolution on three banks of northern rivers with different geographical, climatological and landscape characteristics. Thus, this research used a new type of dataset of soil temperature, moisture and movement never used before. We compared the timing of soil movement events with the soil temperature, soil moisture, air temperature and with discharge information. Specifically, the distribution of the soil movement events in time at each field site was analyzed. Furthermore, the distribution of time-lag between changes in these variables and a soil movement event were considered. The analysis of the results showed that there is no clear temporal distribution of bank movement in the Southernmost investigated site, while in the more Northern field sites soil movement was most frequent around the freezing and thawing periods (e.g. spring and autumn). At the northernmost field site an additional period with an increased frequency of soil movement events is likely caused by reindeer during summer months. The time-lag analysis also shows that freeze-thaw is likely the main driver of soil movement events in the investigated sites. The novel sensors allowed us to obtain a unique dataset which we used to identify individual soil movement events and helps to better understand river bank erosion and by extension fluvial systems in cold-climates.