I think what Bob was trying to say was:

River flood plains are regional centers of ecological organization. This system is dependent on interactions among dynamic, nonlinear physical and biological processes linking water, heat and materials (biota, sediment, plant-growth nutrients) flux and retention to fluvial landscape change. Key processes driving biogeochemical patterns and cycles include flood-caused scour and sedimentation (cut and fill alluviation), routing of river water and nutrients above and below ground, channel movement (avulsion) and production and entrainment of large wood. Groundwater routing through the flood plain and upwelling back to the surface involves penetration of river water into zones of high hydraulic conductivity (subsurface paleochannels) within the bed sediments that are created by channel scour and subsequent filling with sorted gravel and cobbles. Strong interactions between short-duration, high stream-power floods, channel and sediment movement, increased roughness due to presence of vegetation and dead wood and upwelling of groundwater creates a complex, dynamic distribution of resource patches, which we refer to as the shifting habitat mosaic.