Abstract: Lateral migration is an inevitable process of periodic evolution in a meandering river, which is an accumulated result of lateral erosion and deposition. In order to understand the bank migration of typical meandering rivers in the source region of the Yellow River on an interannual timescale, the channel topography was surveyed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Maiqu and Lamucuoqu Rivers from 2018 to 2020. Based on the high-resolution topography generated by the image post-processing technology, the characteristics of river bank migration and curve erosion and deposition on a reach scale are discussed. Results show that because the width change of “point bar-concave bank” is dominated by the enlargement of point bar, the reach where the change of river width exceeds 10% is always at the apex of the bend. The feature of “concave bank erosion and convex bank deposition” in the meandering reach is distinct, and the peak values of concave bank erosion and convex bank deposition are symmetrically distributed along the channel at the outlet of the bend. Erosion and deposition coexist on the convex bank zone in the Maiqu River, though the deposition process is dominated in the long term. The width variation of concave bankline reflects the erosion volume along the channel.