This dataset contains topographic cross sections spanning the river channel, floodplain and valley walls from an approximately 15 kilometer (km) reach of the Kalamazoo River between the Trowbridge Dam and Allegan, Michigan (MI). One representative cross section was selected for each reference reach and located to be oriented perpendicular to the river channel and valley axis. Bankfull hydraulic geometry attributes and complexity metrics were calculated for each cross section, as were floodplain inundation dimensions for flow stages at multiples ranging from 0.9 to 2.0 of the bankfull depth. The cross section data were extracted from a digital elevation model (DEM) comprising topographic and bathymetric data for Area 5 of the Kalamazoo River (Quantum Spatial, 2017). The DEM was created from topobathymetric aerial lidar data collected in November, 2016, combined with multibeam bathymetric data collected in May, 2017 to fill gaps in the lidar. cross section data are provided in tabular and graphical form in Excel files (Reference Reach Spreadsheet; Mecklenburg and Ward, 2011). The data are also provided as individual CSV files for each cross section (in a zipped archive), which contain X and Y coordinates in addition to elevations and cross sectional distance values. cross sections are named by their distance, in meters, downstream from the start of the reference reach. The spatial location of the cross sections is provided by an associated polyline shapefile included in this data release.