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by Michael Capek
illustrated by Drew Brook-Cormack
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Photo Credits: Cover, Philip Gould/Corbis; title, Owen Franken/Corbis; p. 10, David Young-
Wolff/Photoedit; p. 12, Jodi Cobb/National Geographic; p. 14, AFP/Corbis; p. 15 Andrew
Holbrooke/The Stock Market

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by Michael Capek
illustrated by Drew Brook-Cormack

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THE LIFE OF A RIVER
1. springs or rills 7. meandering 3
2. waterfalls path
3. sandbanks 8. tributary
4. oxbow 9. caves
and lake 10. mouth
5. channel 11. sediment
6. islands 12. rapids

No power on Earth alters the landscape as steadily or

as deeply as flowing water. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and
glaciers have all played their roles in molding the planet.
Wind, ice, and ocean waves only nibble at the land,
wearing away bits of mountains and carving out valleys
over eons of time, but flowing water is a never-ending
force. Rivers and streams have continued to erode the
hills and mountains for millions of years. Rivers trans-
port huge amounts of rock, soil, and other materials; cut
new channels; and sometimes spill over their banks to
flood low-lying areas, laying down layer on layer of
mud. Using both chemical and mechanical processes,
water constantly destroys and rebuilds, changing and
rearranging the thin outer layer of the Earth’s crust.

A River Is Born
Rivers originate in various ways. Some emerge from
the ice and snow of high mountain peaks, where melting
glaciers send water gushing into the valleys below.

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Others come from the overflow of high mountain lakes or

alpine marshes. A few rise from springs, water that surges up
from natural reservoirs deep underground.
Most rivers start life as rills,
small gullies cut into soft soil The Amazon River in
by running water. Rain, snow, South America drains one-
and collected groundwater that twentieth of the entire
seeps to the surface unite in Earth’s land surface, and
hundreds of rills and trickle carries sixty times as much
down into streams and brooks. water as the Nile, the
The combined flow surges into world’s longest river.
larger and larger streams. The
streams come together in wide rivers that course to the sea.
Streams that feed a river are called tributaries. The area
drained by a river and all its tributaries is the river’s
drainage basin or watershed. Some rivers drain vast areas.

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Erosion and Channeling

Erosion and channeling are the most common ways in
which water shapes the Earth’s surface.Water flows across
the land, gradually wearing away soil and rock and forming
riverbeds, called channels. Material caught and moved by
water is called sediment. As more water and sediment pour
down them, channels become deeper and valleys form. A
valley may be wide and shallow or steep-sided and deep,
depending on how long water has been flowing there and
what the land is like. A channel may be very deep where
the soil and rock are soft; it might be quite shallow where
the river flows over harder bedrock.

A Meandering Channel
how sediment builds up
in a turn or oxbow
sand

pebbles

rock

bank on swifter side is steeper

and slightly undercut

river’s slowest, shallowest part

river’s deepest, swiftest part

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Rivers that flow through fairly level, pebbly areas are

usually very old and very wide, with islands dividing the
channel into intertwining streams. From above, the courses
of these “braided rivers” look like twisted strands of hair.
Unlike many old valleys, however, the sides of a braided
river are gentle slopes, not steep cliffs, because coarse,
rocky soil does not stick together very well, and the sides of
such streams constantly collapse. The water simply spreads
out, creating shallow channels.

Meandering
Water flows on a course of least resistance, so no river
channel is ever perfectly straight. When moving water
comes to something it cannot easily dissolve or move, it
simply turns and seeks an easier path. Sometimes, too, as a
river slows, it becomes so choked with sediment that it may
actually block its own course and seeks a new path. All
streams and rivers meander, or twist and turn. Bends make a
river much longer than it would be if it were perfectly
straight. In places, some rivers turn so sharply that they
almost double back on themselves, creating horseshoe-
shaped bends called oxbows. Occasionally, a river channel
will shift and cut straight through the bend, leaving an
oxbow lake or marsh separate from the main river channel.
Rivers served as convenient border markers for early
surveyors which accounts for the “wavy” edges of some
states, such as Arkansas, Vermont, Ohio, and Mississippi.

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Waterfalls, Rapids, and Caves

Waterfalls and rapids can form when rivers flow across
areas where hard rock, such as granite and basalt, and softer
rock, such as clay, sandstone, and limestone, are found close
together. The soft rock erodes much faster than the hard
rock, a ledge is formed, and the river, falling over the ledge,
forms a waterfall. The falling water, with its load of sedi-
ment, pounds on rocks below, forming a plunge pool, a
deep hollow beneath the falls.
Natural waterfalls often undercut their own ledges, and
over time the hard rock may crumble and fall into the
plunge pool. In this way, waterfalls are always moving
backward, upstream. Niagara Falls, for instance, has moved
upstream about seven miles in the past 10,000 years and
continues to cut into its hard rock ledge at a rate of three
feet per year.

How Waterfalls, Rapids,

and Caves are Formed

debris from cracked

rocks above
rapids

soft rock white water

steps shallow hole
plunge pool
pothole
sediment plowed
up from stream
bed

cave

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Sometimes, the hard and soft rock sections form a series

of smaller waterfalls, like steps down a steep grade. Where
this happens, the river speeds up, cutting even deeper into
its bed and banks, forming rapids.
Another way water remodels the land is through chemi-
cal erosion. Water contains a weak acid, which dissolves
and carries away mineral compounds called salts. Acids
react with the salts in rock and soil, wearing them away
little by little. The process speeds up if the rock is particu-
larly soft, or if the acid content of rainwater increases, as it
does when pollution in the atmosphere unites with rain
clouds. This explains why rivers sometimes burrow under-
ground and disappear from sight. When the rock beneath
a river is very soft and porous, cracks form and water
pours in.
Over time, the cracks widen into shallow holes. Water
sinking into these holes eventually hollows out an under-
ground channel and forms a cave or cavern. An under-
ground river can zigzag for many miles before reappearing
on the surface again. If the volume of water flowing down
the shallow hole increases, the cave will continue to expand
until eventually the roof collapses, exposing the river once
again. Potholes, deep gorges, and natural bridges are some-
times formed in this way.
The highest waterfall
collapsed roofing brings in the world, Angel
river into the open again
Falls in Venezuela, is
3,212 feet high.

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Sediment Loads of Major Rivers of the World

2,000

Yellow
(1,600)
Ganges
(1,455)
River sediment load in metric tons

1,500

1,000

Mississippi

Irrawaddy
Amazon

(300)
(363)

(299)

Mekong
500

(170)
(172)
Kosi

(111)
Nile
Transportation of Sediment
Rivers work like giant conveyor belts, transporting
material from one place to another. As streams and rivers
flow, their rushing water erodes the land, picking up sed-
iment. The sediment can be rocks, stones, pebbles, sand,
soil, or even living matter—anything water can pick up
and move into the channel. As each stream flows into
another, the lighter material dissolves or becomes sus-
pended in the water, like chocolate powder in milk. The
heaviest rocks and pebbles stay very deep. Under the
raging waters, they tumble, bump, churn, and crash
along.

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In very rainy weather, the sediment load at the bot-

tom of the main river channel may be heavy indeed. It
plows out the riverbed itself, digging up even more mat-
ter and grinding against the shore wherever the stream
turns. Some of the sediment is deposited on the “inside”
of each turn, where the water is slower and shallower.
That explains why sandbars and beaches often form in
these areas. Because the water flows faster on the other
side, the channel is deeper and the bank steeper on the
side opposite a beach or sandbar.
Eventually, as a river approaches the point where it
meets the sea—its mouth—it slows down and drops most
of its remaining sediment. The largest and heaviest mate-
rial settles first, followed by lighter and smaller particles.
Some very fine sediment may not settle at all, unless the
river flow comes to a complete stop.
Every river transports sediment of some kind. What
type and how much a river carries depend on the kind of
land the river and its tributaries drain. Some rivers carry
immense amounts of sediment. Their waters are dark and
thick. The Yellow River (the Huang) in China, in fact,
gets its name from the yellowish soil it sweeps from the
highlands it drains. The Mississippi River is sometimes
referred to as the Big Muddy for exactly the same reason.
Both rivers carry a great deal of dissolved material and
suspended sediment.

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A swiftly flowing river carry-

ing a lot of sediment will change
the landscape much more than a
gentle one with less debris. If a
river flows in the same channel for
thousands of years, its valley will
widen and deepen. Exceptions to
this rule occur when climate and
other factors vary. The Grand
Canyon, for instance, is an exam-
ple of an old river valley that
eroded downward more than side-
ways. There, the Colorado River
has carved a mile-deep channel
while leaving steep, jagged cliffs
on both sides. Because the land
around the canyon gets very little
rainfall, the sandstone and lime-
stone sides of the canyon have
barely eroded at all. All the while,
the mighty Colorado, carrying
sharp sediment from streams hun-
dreds of miles away, has continued
to dig deeper and deeper.

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Deltas
When a river spreads out on a low, flat floodplain, much
of its lighter sediment, called silt, is deposited in a wide,
thin layer, forming a delta. Over time, river deltas, like
those at the lower end of the Mississippi River and the
Chang River in China, extend hundreds of miles out into
the ocean. The Mississippi River delta, in fact, covers most
of the state of Louisiana. Most of these low, marshy areas
are too wet to farm or to build on, though they are home
to thousands of species of birds and animals, which depend
on the delta’s water and plant life for their survival.
When delta land does dry out, the mineral-rich soil
provides some of the richest farming land in the world.
Deltas are one way nature constantly builds new land, as
each layer of silt is deposited on top of an older one. In a
low, flat delta, it is often hard to tell exactly where the river
channel is. The river may separate into a giant fan or
“bird’s foot” pattern as the river breaks into dozens of
smaller waterways. In some ways, this is the opposite of
what occurs in the upper reaches of the river, where many
tributaries come together to form one larger channel.
A delta is the result of a constant battle between a river
and the ocean into which it flows. The sea’s tides and waves
continually erode the soft mud a river lays down, picking
up the material and carrying it away. The river, meanwhile,
constantly brings in new material.

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Left undisturbed by humans, most natural deltas

grow at a steady rate. In the case of the Mississippi
River delta, however, growth slowed around 1900 and
then stopped completely. Before 1900, silt and sedi-
ment accumulation at the river’s mouth on the Gulf of
Mexico created about 2 square miles of new land each
year. After 1900, new dams along the river and new
artificial channels began catching the sediment that
previously had built the delta.

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Today the Mississippi delta is shrinking, losing about 40

square miles of marshland every year. The same thing is
happening at the mouths of other rivers around the world,
wherever people are constructing dams on waterways that
were once free-flowing. The Nile and Ganges River deltas
are other examples of deltas slowly being reclaimed by the
sea. This is a serious concern to scientists and conservation-
ists, who want to preserve the land for the plants and
animals that have lived on it for centuries.

Flooding
People build dams across rivers primarily to control
flooding. For centuries, river levels have risen and fallen in
a regular pattern. Rivers usually
swell in spring, when ice and
Floods in the United
snow melt in the highlands and
States destroy more
precipitation increases over a
than $2 billion in prop-
watershed. When rivers crest at
erty and kill an average
higher-than-normal levels, they
of one hundred people
may overflow their banks. In every year.
many places, such as the Nile
delta, these annual floods are expected and welcome.
Floodwaters bring a wealth of moisture and rich sediment
that refresh the land. Farmers rely on these yearly floods to
ensure good crops. For centuries, the ancient Egyptians
worshiped the river as a god, awed by its power to bring
life to the barren Sahara. There and in other parts of the
world, people’s lives were in harmony with the seasonal rise
and fall of rivers.

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In modern times, though, floods are neither welcome

nor predictable. As the world population soars, more and
more people are forced to live on the floodplains of major
rivers. In addition, weather patterns vary greatly from year
to year in many areas. In years when too much rain falls
too rapidly over a drainage basin, a river’s normal channel
cannot contain the increased flow. Water rises too high too
rapidly and overflows the river’s banks.
Cities and towns can be caught in the path of floods
that spread across normally dry land. In 1993, flooding
caused tremendous damage to homes and businesses along
the Mississippi River. Such floods leave behind tons of
heavy, sticky, stinky mud. Lives are often lost. Many people
flee to higher ground, leaving behind their houses, their
cars, and their possessions. Months may pass before the
floodwaters dry up. In the meantime, people yearn to go
back to their homes. Floods disrupt lives, ruin property, kill

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crops and livestock, and cause business to come to a stand-

still. City reservoirs may be filled with mud or fouled by
water polluted with chemicals or raw sewage.
The land itself is never quite the same after a flood.
Floodwater gets into areas that water never ordinarily
reaches, piling up sediment in new places and choking
small streams and ponds. Low hollows may capture the
water, creating new lakes and marshes. Hills may be under-
cut, causing landslides that fill in valleys. When the waters
recede, the course of the river sometimes shifts. Flooding
rivers build their own natural levees. Sediment piles up
against the old shoreline, causing the riverbank to rise. As
each season’s floodwaters rush downstream, carrying more
eroded rock and soil, these natural levees continue to grow.

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Life on a floodplain is risky. Though people may add

material to the river’s levees, build higher and higher walls,
or construct immense dams, their efforts are not always
successful. When nature goes on a rampage, there is little
humans can do but try to move out of the way and attempt
to clean up the mess afterward. Despite everything people
do, floods will continue to occur, often without warning. To
nature, a flood is neither good nor bad. It is simply part of
a process that has shaped and rebuilt the Earth for millions
of years.

Summary
Rivers represent a powerful force in our environment.
Erosion, channeling, and flooding all change the shape of
land all over the world.
We rely on rivers for food, electricity, and fresh water.
We also play in rivers, sail on them, and sing about them.
Rivers remind us, even inland, hundreds of miles from the
sea, of the extent to which our lives—and our planet—are
shaped by flowing water.

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Think and Respond

1 Notice the order in which the author has organized
this book. Why do you suppose he chose to
describe erosion and channeling before flooding?
2 Briefly summarize what flooding can do to land.
3 What are some of the ways in which water tears
down and builds up the landscape?
4 How can you tell whether a river valley is old or
new?
5 Compare and contrast “How Rivers Shape the
Land” with another selection you have read.
6 How did this book help you understand rivers
better?

River Sediment Stretch a coffee filter or a

piece of cheesecloth loosely across the mouth
of a wide quart jar. Slowly pour a pint of
water, collected from a stream or river just after a
heavy rain, through the filter. (Note: Be sure to collect
only water and not bottom sediment.) Let the muddy
filter dry; then write on it the date the water was
collected. Collect and filter a sample from the same
spot at daily intervals over the next week or two. Keep
a log of the weather and the amount of sediment
filtered out each day.

School-Home Connection Explain to

someone at home what the landscape in your
area might look like a thousand years from now. Draw a
map or picture that shows the changes.