Rivers are more than water

Keith Le Matti

Young, Mature, and Old Age

There are three different STAGES of rivers: the youthful stage; the Maturity of a river; and the river’s Old Age. The differences between these types of rivers are very obvious. They all have very different processes, and change / communicate with the landscape that surrounds them in different ways.

Young, Mature, and Old Age

• Youth• Another name for the

youth of a river is the river’s source

• When a river is young, it is fast

• It erodes the land faster than in its older stages

• These rivers are located high up in the mountains, forests, etc, in landscapes that have a very high elevation

The youthful stage of a river

Young, Mature, and Old Age

Maturity

• In the maturity of a river, erosion changes

• The river begins to erode sideways (horizontally)

• This creates meaners (bends in the river) as it moves closer to ground level (0 metres of elevation)

Young, Mature, and Old Age

Old Age• The final stage in the river has many meanders• It is the slowest stage of the river, and flows at almost ground level• Here, deposition occurs• The river lets go of its rocks and other materials (the load), which

is left at the bottom of the river• These processes of the old river make lakes that are separate from

the river

Other types of rivers

We can identify different landscapes created by rivers:

• Estuary

• Delta

• Lake

• Rejuvenated river

• Bays

Back to business…

Rivers are a lot more interesting than just being water running through the world

Rivers provide so much life everywhere, without rivers, forests and parts of the countryside wouldn’t survive to the extent that it does

Rivers give life to villages, towns, and cities through the nutrients (like little pieces of life) they give to the green landscape

People and Rivers

We interact or communicate with rivers

• We use rivers for transport, build bridges to move across the landscape

• We use rivers for sport and athletics

• Rivers are used for tourism

• People visit countries to see these beautiful landscapes, and this gives money to the governments of those countries

The River Nile - Egypt

The River Nile - Egypt

• It’s 4,150miles long, and it’s the second longest course of water in the world

• However, most of the tourism in Egypt is centred on this phenomenon

Estuaries

• Estuaries are bridge environments between rivers and oceans

• They are influenced by river processes

• This includes deposition at the mature and old age stages of a river, and erosion of the youthful and mature stages

• They also see oceanic processes, for example tidal waves, erosion of coastal areas, etc

Estuaries

• What was an estuary?

• Estuaries can come from river valleys near or far from coasts that have been drowned by flooding and / or high tides from the sea

• They can also be created by the movement of plates, of oceanic into continental crust

Bays and estuaries

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrXAGY1dmE

Bays and estuaries

• The Giants Causeway was formed when theNorth American plate and the Euroasian platemoved apart millions of years ago

• From the core of the earth, magma spilledacross the ocean as lava, and deposited theselandscapes of basalt rock

Bays and estuaries

Estuaries

Bays and Estuaries

Bays

• A bay is a part of the sea/ocean, or a lake which is between two pieces of land on the coast

• Bays can be created by the processes of glaciation (ice), volcanism (volcanoes), and changes in the sea

• Bays can also be estuaries

Bays

• The water in bays is calm, tranquil

• Because of the land on either side of the water, winds are not strong

• The bay of Bengal is the world´s largest bay

• The land on either side is from two different countries

• The continents moved apart, and the bay was created

The Bay of Bengal

Dundalk Bay

Lakes

• A lake is a standing body of water

• What does this mean?

• It means that it has no connection with theocean

• They can be connected to rivers, that can make the lakes bigger, or make them smaller

Lakes

Rivers on Mars

Life on other planets

This is Dao Vallis, aninteresting river system onthe surface of Mars.It is a river that flows belowa large volcano named“Hadriaca Patera.”

I think that the river has communicated with thevolcano. This interactionhas made a number of landforms between thetwo landscapes.We will compare it withpictures of some rivers onplanet Earth.

Dao Vallis and Earth

Similarities

•Dao Vallis is constructed by big floodcalled a “megaflood”, which wasstrong enough to flood all of Spain.

•Valleys in the river channel are similar to channels of rivers on PlanetEarth

Conclusions

• Look at the earth image on the bottom right, then look at the image of Mars on the left, do they look similar? What do you think?