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What Are River
Landforms?

What Are River Landforms?

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Rivers aren't just features on the
landscape, but help form it.

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Water is a major force shaping the landscape. Water
can exert weight on objects and gradually dissolve objects, creating unique
features such as waterfalls and canyons. Sudden changes in weather can change
the quantity of water flowing through the river, leading to floods and bodies of
water.

Rivers

Landforms are features created by nature. Rivers are bodies of moving
water that can create landforms. Rivers are landforms themselves.
Tributaries are landforms caused by a river or stream feeding into a larger
river. Rivers eventually enter a lake or sea. The "mouth of the river" is
the point where this occurs.

Deltas

The river sometimes has sediment that forms a triangular plain at the
mouth of the river, called the "delta." This occurs when sediment deposits
faster than the sea can remove it.

V-Shaped Valleys

Rivers erode land over time, creating canyons. These rivers are called
"alluvial rivers." Rivers create different valley types. Upper-course rivers
create steep-sided v-shaped valleys and often have interlocking spurs,
rapids and waterfalls. When a river falls steeply from hard rock, the water
forms a waterfall. Waterfalls appear as a result of the river eroding the
rocks unpredictably. Faults in the Earth's crust and glaciers also cause
waterfalls. Interlocking spurs are land ridges that jut out into the water
in alternating ways. Rapids are very turbulent stretches of water caused by
resistance placed on the water by various rocks.

Shallower Valleys

Middle-course rivers create wider and shallower valleys, which might have
meanders (bends of the river) and oxbow lakes, which are lakes shaped in
crescents and are found along winding rivers. Lower-course rivers create
flat-bottomed valleys. These areas might have floodplains and deltas.
Floodplains are areas that are next to rivers and can flood in the
"floodway," which is the area that fills up with moving water, which is more
dangerous than the flood fringe. The flood fringe instead fills with
standing water.

Rivers can create back swamps near the river, caused by floods carrying
fine material to the location of the eventual swamp. This material holds
water and drains slowly, leading to new swamp
habitats.

Levees

Sometimes, the sediment that deposits at the side of the river channel
will create natural levees, which can prevent flooding. Also, the bank
deposits on the river are major sources of nutrients. The natural levees are
sometimes not high enough to protect against serious floods, so people still
build artificial levees, usually.

References

Marry E. Phillips School: Landforms

BBC: River Landforms

ThinkQuest: Waterfalls & Rapids

Missouri Botanical Garden: Ponds and Lakes: What Is
An Oxbow Lake?

Janesville Wisconsin's Park Place: What is a
Floodplain?

University of Wisconsin, Stephen's Point; Landforms of Alluvial
Rivers; Michael E. Ritter; 2006

Photo Credit Photos.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images

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