How does a river change along its course?

Geography essay: how does a river change along its course?

A river through the time that it exists changes its course from how it first began. The two parts of the river is the upper course and the lower course. These two parts of the river have very varied properties and do opposite things. Before finding out how a river changes on its course we must first know what a river does. Rivers do three main things:
·         Erosion (when water hits rocks and makes it wear away into silt)
·         Transportion (when the current of the water takes the silt with it)
·         Deposition (when the water leaves the silt behind)


These things can be shown in a simple diagram:

Erosion varies in the two courses. In the upper coarse vertical erosion takes place. In the lower coarse lateral erosion takes place. Other features of the upper and lower coarse are:
·         Small streams (upper)
·         Slow current (upper)
·         Mostly straight (upper)
·         Large stream (lower)
·         Faster current (lower)
·         Meanders (lower)
·         Water takes the quickest route possible and always flows down stream (general rule)

 That’s why the features that are the upper coarse are different to the features in the lower course.
The general appearance of the upper coarse is that it has slow streams and it isn’t very wide. It is slow because it has many rocks in its way. It isn’t very wide because it isn’t very bendy because land is very steep it just goes straight and only erodes vertically.


     
.
 These features occur for different reasons but it is important to remember that erosion is taking place vertically. The description of how a waterfall is shown below:







The v shaped valley:








There are meanders in the river because the deposited land fills up the past-eroded land making the river meander. When the oxbow lake is formed the water will flow straight and not in the lake. It will become a lake because deposited land will close it off from the river.
 
The lower coarse has many different characteristics it is much more bendy and has a faster current and is very wide. One of the features is the oxbow lake. 


Written by Rosaline Koch

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