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.
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)