Flowing water, in streams and rivers or across the land in sheets, is the dominant

erosional process in shaping Earth's landscape. Streams and rivers are not merely
systems for moving surface water to the world's oceans and seas. They are also systems
for moving weathered rocks and other sediment to those large bodies of water. In fact, it
is estimated that streams and rivers move about 1.65 billion tons (1.5 billion metric tons)
of sediment from land to the oceans each year. By shifting such great masses of
sediment, streams and rivers become sculptors of the land.

Streams and rivers erode, transport sediment, change course, and flood their banks in
natural and recurring patterns. It is true that most of the erosional work done by surface
water is not done by streams or rivers but instead by falling raindrops and by the
resulting unorganized runoff down slopes. Yet streams and rivers are able to create both
erosional landforms (their own channels, canyons, and valleys) and depositional
landforms (floodplains, alluvial fans, and deltas) as they flow over Earth's surface.

The shape of the land

Geologists define a stream as any body of running water that moves downslope under
the influence of gravity in a narrow and defined channel on Earth's surface. Streams are
also found on the ground surface in caves and underneath and inside glaciers (large
bodies of ice that formed on land by the compaction and recrystallization of snow and
that survive year to year). Rivers, creeks, brooks, and runs are all streams. Most sources
define a river simply as a large stream; creeks, brooks, and runs are simply small
streams. For this discussion, stream will be used to refer to all of these bodies of running
water.
The waters of almost half a continent flow through the Mississippi River. About 159
million tons of sediment—70 percent of which consists of clay, silt, and fine sand—are
carried by the river annually