Starter quiz
- What is erosion?
- The process of water slowing down
- The movement of material along the river
- The wearing away of riverbanks and bed by water and sediment ✓
- The depositing of material by a river
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- What is a meander?
- A bend in the river’s course ✓
- A waterfall formed by erosion
- A fast-flowing section of a river
- A landform found in the upper course
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- What is a floodplain?
- A steep valley created by erosion
- A flat area next to a river that floods ✓
- A type of river erosion
- A deep section of a river’s channel
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- How does a river valley change as it moves downstream?
- It gets wider and flatter with gentler slopes ✓
- It stays the same from source to mouth
- It becomes steeper with more waterfalls
- It becomes deeper and narrower with no change in width
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- What is the watershed?
- The start of a river
- A smaller river that joins the main river
- Where a river end meets the sea
- The boundary of the drainage basin ✓
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- A river's __________ describes the river's journey from source to mouth.
- cross section
- gradient
- long profile ✓
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Exit quiz
- __________ is the breakdown and removal of material by a river.
- Erosion ✓
- Transportation
- Deposition
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- When does deposition occur?
- At the mouth of a river ✓
- Wherever the river loses energy and can no longer carry its load of sediment ✓
- When a river is flowing very quickly
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- What ways do rivers transport sediment?
- Suspension, solution, traction, saltation ✓
- Suspension, supposition, trapping, saltinisation
- Moving, dropping, rolling, dissolving
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- What is river discharge?
- The sediment carried by the river
- The speed of the water in the river
- The volume of water that flows through a river at a specific point/time ✓
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Worksheet
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Presentation
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Video
Lesson Details
Key learning points
- Rivers erode landscapes through the processes of hydraulic action, abrasion, attrition and solution.
- Rivers transport sediment through the processes of traction, saltation, suspension and solution.
- Rivers deposit sediment in areas of low energy.
Common misconception
Deposition only occurs at the mouth of a river.
Deposition happens at the mouth of a river, but it also occurs wherever the river loses energy and can no longer carry its load of sediment.
Keywords
Sediment - particles of rock, soil, and organic material that are carried by a river as it flows (they vary in size from fine silt to larger boulders)
River discharge - the volume of water that flows through a river at a given point over a specific period of time
River velocity - the speed at which water flows in a river
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