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Channels also describe the deeper course through a reef, sand bar, bay, or any shallow body of water. An example of a river running through a sand bar is the Columbia Bar—the mouth of the Columbia River. A stream channel is the physical confine of a stream consisting of a bed and stream banks. Stream channels exist in a variety of geometries.
All large rivers, and most small ones, have channels that are usually lined with alluvium, sediment that was carried to that channel reach by the river and that eventually will be carried farther downstream. [3] This lining of alluvium creates a protective shield over the bedrock, which means it takes a much greater stream power to carve the ...
A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel, and the phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. Distributaries are common features of river deltas, and are often found where a valleyed stream enters wide flatlands or approaches the coastal plains around a lake or an ocean.
The joints are usually less resistant to erosion than the bulk rock so erosion tends to preferentially open the joints and streams eventually develop along the joints. The result is a stream system in which streams consist mainly of straight line segments with right-angle bends and tributaries join larger streams at right angles. [2]
Runoff is the flow of water across the earth, and is a major component in the hydrological cycle. Runoff that flows over land before reaching a watercourse is referred to as surface runoff or overland flow. Once in a watercourse, runoff is referred to as streamflow, channel runoff, or river runoff. Urban runoff is surface runoff created by ...
A wide variety of river and stream channel types exist in limnology, the study of inland waters.All these can be divided into two groups by using the water-flow gradient as either low gradient channels for streams or rivers with less than two percent (2%) flow gradient, or high gradient channels for those with greater than a 2% gradient.
Stream load is a geologic term referring to the solid matter carried by a stream (Strahler and Strahler, 2006). Erosion and bed shear stress continually remove mineral material from the bed and banks of the stream channel, adding this material to the regular flow of water. The amount of solid load that a stream can carry, or stream capacity, is ...
Streamflow, or channel runoff, is the flow of water in streams and other channels, and is a major element of the water cycle. It is one runoff component, the movement of water from the land to waterbodies , the other component being surface runoff .