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)