Geography (rivers)

• What is the effect on the world of using top many resources and making too much waste?

  We need more food, which means we need to clear more land for farming, we need more homes, which means we need to clear more land.
• Groundwater


  This water is held underground
• Water vapour


  This name for water in gas form
• Infiltration 


  When water soaks down though the ground
• Precipitation 


  Another word for rainfall
• Evaporation 


  The process when water turns into gas
• Condensation 


  The process where gas turns into water
• Impermeable 


  Does not let water pass through
• Surface run-off


  Water travelling over the earth's surface into the water
• Throughflow


  As water soaks into the soil, some runs down the slop into the river
• Erosion


  The wearing away of rock
• Transportation 


  Moving material down river
• Deposition


  Material is dropped when the river loses energy
• Hydraulic action


  When water is forced into cracks
• Attrition 


  The rocks bang together and knock bits off eachother
• Abrasion


  Rocks act like sandpaper scraping the river bed and banks away
• Traction


  Heavy stones are dragged along the river bed
• Saltation


  Light stones are dragged along the river bed
• Solution


  Dissolved material is carried along
• Suspension


  Small light particles carried along in the water making it look muddy
• Sediment


  A layer of material deposited by a river
• River valley


  'V' shaped and in upper course
• Tributaries


  Smaller rivers joining the main river
• Floodplain


  Land beside river liable to flood
• Watershed 


  Boundary of on river basin to the next
• River basin


  Land in which rainfall feeds the water
• Conflume


  Point where one river meets another
• Waterfall


  Where a river flows over a steep drop
• Gorges


  A narrow valley with steep sides
• Meander


  A bend in the river
• Oxbow lakes 


  A lake formed when a loop in a river gets cut off