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.
|
The v shaped valley:
|
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