Cambridge International AS & A Level Geography 9696 syllabus.

Component Weighting AS Level A Level

Component AS Level A Level

Paper 1 Core Physical 50% 25%
Geography 1 hour 30 minutes
Section A: Three data response
questions (30 marks)

Section B: One structured

question from a choice of
three (30 marks) 60 marks
Paper 2 Core Human 50% 25%
Geography 1 hour 30 minutes
Section A: Three data response
questions (30 marks)

Section B: One structured

question from a choice of
three (30 marks) 60 marks
Paper 3 Advanced Physical - 25%
Geography Options 1 hour 30
minutes Candidates answer
questions on two of the
optional topics. Each topic
consists of one structured
question (10 marks) and a
choice of essay questions (20
marks). 60 marks
Paper 4 Advanced Human - 25%
Geography Options 1 hour 30
minutes Candidates answer
questions on two of the
optional topics. Each topic
consists of one structured
question (10 marks) and a
choice of essay questions (20
marks). 60 marks

Hydrology and fluvial geomorphology

 The drainage basin system: Outputs: evaporation, evapotranspiration and river discharge.
Stores: interception, soil water, surface water, ground water, and channel storage. Flows:
above ground – throughfall, stemflow, overland flow, and channel flow. Flows: below
ground – infiltration, percolation, throughflow, groundwater, and baseflow. Underground
water: water tables, ground water, recharge, and springs.
 Discharge relationships within drainage basins Components of hydrographs (storm and
annual). Influences on hydrographs. Climate: precipitation type and intensity, temperature,
evaporation, transpiration, evapotranspiration, and antecedent moisture. Drainage basin
 characteristics: size and shape, drainage density, porosity and permeability of soils, rock
type, slopes, vegetation type, and land use.
 River channel processes and landforms Channel processes Erosion: abrasion/corrasion,
solution, cavitation, and hydraulic action. Load transport: traction, saltation, suspension, and
solution. Deposition and sedimentation: the Hjülstrom curve. River flow: velocity and
discharge, patterns of flow (laminar, turbulent and helicoidal), and thalweg. Channel types:
straight, braided, and meandering. Landforms: meander (river cliffs, point bars, oxbow
lakes), riffle and pool sequences, waterfalls, gorges, bluffs, floodplains, levées, and deltas.
 The human impact Modifications to catchment flows and stores and to channel flows by
land-use changes (deforestation, afforestation, urbanisation), abstraction and water storage.
The causes and impacts of river floods; prediction of flood risk and recurrence intervals. The
prevention and amelioration of river floods to include: • forecasts and warnings • hard
engineering – dams, straightening, levées and diversion spillways • soft engineering –
floodplain and drainage basin management, wetland and river bank conservation and river
restoration.
 Case study: candidates must study a recent river flood event showing the causes of the
flood, impacts on both people and the environment, and evaluate attempts to reduce the
impact of the flood.

Hydrology and Fluvio- geomorphology

Rivers are dynamic, open systems. They take water from the global hydrological
cycle, use it in their own local hydrological cycle and then return the water to the
global cycle. The global hydrological cycle is a closed system. It (as far as you’re
aware) doesn’t have any inputs or outputs, it remains constant 1.

When considering the hydrological cycle of a river, normally you look at the
hydrological cycle of a river’s drainage basin. The drainage basin of a river is the
area surrounding a river where precipitation flows into the river. It is sometimes
called the catchment area because it is where the river “catches” its water. The
boundary between two drainage basins is the watershed. Any precipitation that lands
beyond the watershed lands in a different drainage basin and is part of a different
river’s hydrological cycles.

What is a Drainage Basin?

The drainage basin hydrological system is a local open system. A drainage basin is
an area of land drained by a river and its tributaries (river system). It includes water
found in the water table and surface run-off. There is an imaginary line separating
drainage basins called a watershed. Usually, this is a ridge of high land. The red line
in Figure 1 shows the watershed for a river basin. Any precipitation that falls on the
other side of the watershed will flow into a river in the adjacent river basin.
Erosion

 Attrition - This is when material bashes against each other and breaks up into smaller
more rounded pieces
 Corrosion - This is when material in the river is broken down by chemicals
 Corrasion - This is when stones and pebbles rub away at the bed and banks
 Hydraulic action - This is the power of the water on the bed and banks

Transportation

 Saltation - This is when smaller pebbles are bounced along the river bed
 Solution - This is when lighter material is dissolved and is carried along in the water
 Traction - This is when larger bed load is dragged or rolled along the river bed
 Suspension - This is when light material is carried along within the water (in
suspension)
Deposition
A river requires lots of energy to transport its load and when this energy is reduced, the river is
forced to deposit the load. An example would be on the inside of a river bend where the slow
moving water has little energy and deposits the load.

Key Terms
There are lots of keywords that you need to learn and understand for this section.
The key terms you need to understand are listed below.
Inputs – water coming into the system
Precipitation – all forms of moisture that reach the Earth’s surface e.g. rain, snow,
sleet and hail.
Storage – water stored in the system
Interception – this is when precipitation lands on buildings, vegetation and concrete
before it reaches the soil. Interception storage is only temporary as it is often quickly
evaporated.
Vegetation storage – this is water taken up by vegetation. It is all the moisture in
vegetation at any one time.
Surface storage – the total volume of water held on the Earth’s surface in lakes,
ponds and puddles.
Groundwater storage – the storage of water underground in permeable rock strata.
Channel storage -the water held in a river or stream channel.
Flows and Processes – water moving from one place to another
Baseflow – water that reaches the channel largely through slow throughflow and
from permeable rock below the water table.
Channel flow – the movement of water within the river channel. This is also called a
river’s discharge.
Groundwater flow – the deeper movement of water through underlying permeable
rock strata below the water table. Limestone is highly permeable with lots of joints
and can lead to faster groundwater flow.
Infiltration – the downward movement of water into the soil surface.
Interflow – water flowing downhill through permeable rock above the water table.
Percolation – the gravity flow of water within the soil.
Stemflow – water running down a plant stem or tree trunk.
Surface Runoff – the movement of water over the surface of the land, usually when
the ground is saturated or frozen or when precipitation is too intense from infiltration
to occur.
Outputs – water leaving the system
Evaporation – the transformation of water droplets into water vapour by heating.
Evapotranspiration – the loss of water from a drainage basin into the atmosphere
from the leaves of plants + loss from evaporation.
Transpiration – evaporation from plant leaves.

WATER CYCLE GLOSSARY

Condensation– the process by which water vapor in the air is changed into liquid water.
Condensation is crucial to the water cycle because it is responsible for the formation of
clouds.
Evaporation– the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor.
Evaporation is the primary pathway that water moves from the liquid state back into the
water cycle as atmospheric water vapor. Studies have shown that the oceans, seas, lakes, and
rivers provide nearly 90 percent of the moisture in the atmosphere via evaporation, with the
remaining 10 percent being contributed by plant transpiration.
Evapotranspiration– the sum of evaporation from the land surface plus transpiration from
plants.
Freshwater storage– freshwater existing on the Earth’s surface, which includes streams,
ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and freshwater wetlands. The definition of freshwater is water
containing less than 1,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved solids, most often salt.
Groundwater discharge– groundwater is discharged when it emerges back to the surface of
the Earth and flows into stream beds.
Groundwater storage– water existing for long periods below the Earth’s surface. The water
is still moving, possibly very slowly, and it is still part of the water cycle. Most of the water
in the ground comes from precipitation that infiltrates downward from the land surface.
Infiltration– the downward movement of water from the land surface into soil or porous
rock.
Precipitation– water released from clouds in the form of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, or
hail. It is the primary connection in the water cycle that provides for the delivery of
atmospheric water to the Earth. Most precipitation falls as rain.
Saturated water content– the water content when water fills every available pore space in a
soil. When soils are saturated, new rain has nowhere to go and flooding is likely.
Soil water content-  soil is made of many small mineral and organic particles, with pore
space between them that can be filled with air or water. Soil water content is the percentage
of a soil volume that is water. In other words, if soil water content is 25%, that means that a 1
cubic meter of soil contains 0.25 cubic meters of water.
Springs– a water resource formed when the side of a hill, a valley bottom or other excavation
intersects a flowing body of groundwater at or below the local water table. A spring is the
result of an aquifer being filled to the point that the water overflows onto the land surface.
They range in size from intermittent seeps, which flow only after much rain, to huge pools
with a flow of hundreds of millions of gallons per day.
Sublimation– the process by which water changes from a solid (ice or snow) to a gas,
bypassing the liquid phase. When dry air hits snow, it changes the snow directly into water
vapor, bypassing the liquid phase. Sublimation is a common way for snow to disappear
quickly in arid climates.
Surface runoff– the water in rivers which comes directly from runoff from the land surface;
this accounts for most of the water in rivers (other inputs are direct precipitation and ground
water).
Water in the atmosphere– water stored in the atmosphere as vapor, such as clouds and
humidity. Only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth’s water volume is stored in the
atmosphere at any given time.
Water vapor– Vapor Pressure Deficit, or VPD, is the difference (deficit) between the
amount of moisture in the air and how much moisture the air can hold when it is saturated.
Once air becomes saturated water will condense out to form clouds, dew or films of water
over leaves or surfaces.

Inputs & Outputs

A drainage basin is an open system meaning it has inputs and outputs. The most obvious
input (at least here in Britain) is rain but snow, hail & dew all act as inputs too. These inputs
(including rain) are grouped under the term precipitation, water that falls or condenses on the
ground. Basins also have outputs that are, again, pretty obvious. Evaporation is a big one,
where water turns into a gas and become part of the atmosphere. Transpiration is similar to
evaporation but is the loss of water as a vapour from plant and tree leaves. The combined
effect of evaporation and transpiration is called evapotranspiration. The final output, the one
that a lot of people forget, is water flowing out of the basin. The technical name for this
is river discharge.

Stores

A store is a way of storing water in a drainage basin. There’s a couple of different

types of water storage. One is vegetation storage. Vegetation lives off of water right?
Well, any vegetation in a drainage basin will take up precipitation and store it, simple. The
vegetation storage is the total volume of water stored in the vegetation in a basin at one time.

Vegetation provides another type of storage too, intercepted storage. Vegetation doesn’t store
all of the water it comes into contact with, some of it is intercepted by leaves where the
water will remain until it evaporates or falls to the ground. Although vegetation is the
most common interceptor of water, buildings and other structures will intercept water
and act as stores too.

A lake or a pond is another type of storage as is their smaller cousin, a puddle. Yes
puddles are small but they all add up to form surface storage. This can be a
significant percentage of the total amount of water stored in a drainage basin. In
addition to being stored on the surface, water is stored in the ground too. This is
known as groundwater storage. This could be water that has been absorbed by the
soil or it could be water that has percolated into rocks. You may have heard of a little
something called the water table. The water table is a form of groundwater storage
made up of lots of aquifers (permeable rocks) that have had their pores filled with
water.
Flows

Flows are fairly simple, they’re just the different ways that water can move from point
A to B in a drainage basin. One of the obvious types of flow is  channel flow. The
name gives it away, this is where water flows through a river channel at a speed
dependent on the channel’s efficiency.

Another type of flow is overland flow. You may have heard of this as surface runoff.
This is where water travels across the surface of the ground when it can’t infiltrate
into it. You’ll get this sort of flow when the ground is baked (dried for extensive
periods of time), saturated or frozen. You can also get overland flow when you have
a lot of impermeable rocks that water can’t permeate through. Overland flow is
fastest when the water is travelling down a steep sided hill and almost non-existent
when the land is flat.

I used a term called infiltration in the previous paragraph. This is where water seeps
into the soil through cracks and breaks in the surface. Once the water is in the soil, it
can travel around in one of several different ways. One way is
through throughflow where water moves downhill through the soil under the influence
of gravity. The speed of throughflow is dependent on the type of soil and the
presence of things like cracks and burrows which act as tunnels through which the
water can flow. Instead of travelling through throughflow, the water can continue to
seep into the soil and percolate down to the water table. At this point, it can travel
above the water table through permeable rocks as interflow. Alternatively, it can
travel beneath the water table as groundwater flow. If this groundwater feeds into a
river, it’s called baseflow. The speed of interflow and groundwater flow is highly
dependent on the permeability of the rocks the water’s travelling through. These
processes are normally very slow but permeable rocks will make them faster 2.
Vesicular3 rocks, such as pumice or vesicular basalt, allow water to percolate far
more easily than rocks like granite, which aren’t vesicular.

There’s two more type of flow that we haven’t discussed, the first is stemflow. Like
channel flow, the name’s a bit of a giveaway with this one. Stemflow is water that
runs down the stems of plants or, alternatively, the trunks of trees. The second type
of flow is throughfall (not to be confused with throughflow). This is where water drips
off of leaves that have intercepted precipitation.

River Discharge

The discharge of a river (or stream) is the volume of water that flows past a point in
the river’s course per second. The volume is measured in cubic metres (m 3) and it’s
per second so the units of discharge are cubic metres a second or m 3s-1.
Coincidentally, 1m3s-1 is the same as 1 cumec so the discharge of a river is often
measured in cumecs because it’s a bit easier to say. Discharge is normally
measured at gauging stations that are situated at different points along the river.

The discharge of a river changes over time depending on a few factors. The most
influential factor is the weather. After heavy rainfall the discharge of the river will be
higher because there’s more water entering the river. The weather affects discharge
so much that there’s a special graph that we can draw called a hydrograph which
 shows precipitation and discharge on the same graph and makes it easy to see how
quickly precipitation affects the discharge of a river. A storm hydrograph is a specific
type of hydrograph that, shows precipitation and discharge during and after a storm.
The main difference between a normal hydrograph and a storm hydrograph is that a
storm hydrograph is over a much shorter period of time.

Storm Hydrograph

 A storm hydrograph is a graph to show how and when a rainfall event affects the
discharge of a river. The amount and intensity of the rainfall is not the only factor
influencing the shape of the hydrograph. Peak discharge - maximum amount of water
held in the channel.
 Peak rainfall – maximum amount of rainfall (millimetres).
 Lag time - the time taken between peak rainfall and peak discharge.
 Rising limb - shows the increase in discharge on a hydrograph.
 Falling limb - shows the return of discharge to normal/base flow on a hydrograph.
 Base flow - the normal discharge of the river.
The lag time can be short or long depending on different factors. For example, if
there is no vegetation in an area, the water runs off into the river quicker, therefore it
would have a short lag time. Alternatively, if there is plenty of vegetation in the area,
the lag time would be longer as the plants would intercept the rainfall. A short lag
time means water is reaching the river quickly, so there is a greater chance of a
flood.

Factors influencing lag time include:

 Size of drainage basin

 Vegetation
 Valley side steepness
 Soil type
Physical Factors
Time of year

In temperate climates, where seasonal change is evident, runoff levels can

vary greatly throughout the year.

In summer, runoff levels can be low due to a reduction in rainfall. Soil

saturation levels will be low and therefore any rainfall at this point can
easily infiltrate into the ground.

However, intense baking of the soil by the sun can lead to the soil
becoming effectively impermeable and summer storms can lead to high
levels of runoff as the rain is unable to soak in. This can lead to flash
floods.

In winter, precipitation may be in the form of snow and the water may be
stored on the ground due to low temperatures. Warmer temperatures in
spring may lead to snowmelt and this can lead to the soil reaching field
capacity quickly. Further meltwater will therefore run over the surface.

Storm conditions

Intense storms with heavy rainfall can lead to soils quickly becoming
saturated. This can happen in two ways:
  Prolonged rainfall – moderate to high volumes of rainfall over a
sustained period can eventually saturate the soil leading to runoff.
 Intense rainfall – heavy rain in a short period can bounce and then
flow over the Earth’s surface as runoff.

Vegetation cover

Vegetation can intercept precipitation and reduce runoff. Leaves and stems
can capture rain and prevent it from reaching the ground. It will eventually
reach the ground but the process will have been slowed by the vegetation
and therefore water will infiltrate into the ground rather than runoff.

Dense vegetation with proteoid roots (hairy roots with a large surface area)
can absorb large volumes of water even in storm conditions, which will
prevent runoff.

Soil saturation levels

Where field capacity is reached in the soil, no more infiltration can take
place and therefore runoff will occur.

Topography & relief

In “v” shaped valleys on steep slopes, runoff will increase due to gravity.

On flatter surfaces runoff is less likely to happen as water will be able to

infiltrate into the soil more easily.

Equally, depressions in the Earth’s surface and an undulating relief can

allow water to collect and reduce runoff.

Human factors
Agricultural land use

Initially, agricultural land use can have the same impact as vegetation
cover, in that crops can intercept precipitation and reduce runoff. However,
intensive agriculture where irrigation may be used, can cause waterlogged
soils and therefore lead to runoff.

Heavy use of agricultural machinery can compact the soil and reduce its
infiltration capacity, making runoff more likely.
Urban land use

Changing greenfield surfaces to impermeable concrete and tarmac as

construction takes place can increase the level of runoff in an area.

There’s a curve showing the discharge of the river and there’s a series of bars
showing some (fairly heavy) precipitation. There’s a few things to note on this graph.
First is the lag time. The lag time is the time difference between the peak
precipitation and and the peak discharge. A long lag time indicates that it’s taking a
long time for precipitation to enter the river. Conversely, a short lag time indicates
that the precipitation is entering the river fairly quickly. The rising limb is the steep
part of the discharge line that has a positive gradient, indicating that the discharge is
increasing. The falling limb is the opposite showing that the discharge is falling.

The shape of a hydrograph varies in each river basin and each individual storm
event. The hydrographs below show two contrasting environments.
Before Urbanisation

After Urbanisation
 Urbanisation is the main human impact on a storm hydrograph. Surface runoff
increases when areas are  urbanised due to the removal of top soil and vegetation.
As roads, pavements and buildings are constructed the surface becomes
impermeable. Laying drains leads to the rapid transportation of water to river
channels which reduces the lag time.

How does urbanisation impact the water cycle?

The natural water cycle is impacted by buildings and sealed surfaces.

As a result, natural water flows are altered and stormwater is created.

Stormwater is rain that has collected on roofs, roads, footpaths and other
sealed surfaces. It flows directly into our waterways via the stormwater
drainage network.

In urban areas, water cycle problems include:

Pollution
When water comes in contact with urban surfaces such as roofs, roads and
footpaths, it becomes contaminated with oil, metals, litter and other
pollutants. This is what we call stormwater.

Stormwater drains do not usually have any treatment systems, so

pollutants are carried directly into our waterways, bays and oceans.

Waterway flushing
When it rains, the volume of stormwater entering the waterways in urban
areas increases. Water that would usually soak into the ground floods into
the stormwater drainage network, where it is transported directly to our
waterways.

High volumes of stormwater impact our waterways by:

 damaging the habitat for aquatic animals, such as fish and invertebrates
 disturbing the breeding cycles of aquatic animals
 eroding stream banks
 increasing turbidity and pollution levels
 altering natural flood cycles.

Flooding
During heavy rainfall events, large volumes of stormwater collect on sealed
surfaces and flow into the stormwater drainage network. Flooding can
occur when the volume of stormwater exceeds the capacity of the
stormwater drains. This can cause flooding in areas not necessarily close
to waterways.

Decreased soil moisture

Most urban surfaces are sealed, or impermeable. They prevent rainwater
from soaking into the soil as it does in the natural water cycle.

Low soil moisture in urban areas can impede healthy growth of plants, so
irrigation is required to keep trees, plants and grass healthy.  In Melbourne,
many of the trees have developed shallow root systems as a result of years
of surface irrigation, making them unstable.

Factors Affecting a Storm Hydrograph

The Drainage Basin

The shape of a hydrograph is altered by a few different things. One factor is the
shape of the drainage basin. Drainage basins come in a wide assortment of shapes.
(Roughly) Circular shapes are common as are more elongated and narrow shapes.
For a circular drainage basin, the river’s hydrograph can often be described as
“flashy” because it will have a fairly steep rising limb and a high peak discharge. This
is because all points in the drainage basin are (again, roughly) equidistant from the
river so all the precipitation reaches the river at the same time.

The size of the drainage basin obviously has an impact on the hydrograph. Large
basins will have high peak discharges because they catch more precipitation but at
the same time they’ll have longer lag times than small basins because the water
takes longer to reach the rivers.

Basins with steep slopes will have a high peak discharge and a short lag time
because the water can travel faster downhill. Finally the drainage density of a basin
will affect the lag time and the steepness of the falling limb. Basins with lots of
streams and rivers (a high drainage density) will have a short lag time and a fairly
steep falling limb because water will drain out of them quickly.

Soil & Rock Type

If a river is surrounded by non-porous and impermeable rocks (e.g., mudstone) it’s

going to have a high peak discharge and a short lag time. Impermeable rocks won’t
let water percolate through them, forcing the water to travel via overland flow. This is
much faster than groundflow, interflow and throughflow so the lag time is reduced.
Furthermore, non-porous rocks can’t store water so the peak discharge of a river is
increased as more water enters the river rather than being stored in the drainage
basin.
The soil’s ability to let water infiltrate has a similar effect to the dominant rock type in
a drainage basin. Unconsolidated soils allow water to infiltrate and so act as a store
in a drainage basin. In addition, water travels slowly through soil via throughflow.
This reduces the peak discharge while increasing the lag time of a river. On the other
hand, extremely fine clay soils don’t allow water to infiltrate. As a result, water travels
quickly as overland flow, reducing the lag time of a river.

Weather & Climate

The intensity of a storm will obviously impact the peak discharge of the river. More
rainwater = more water in the river so a higher discharge. Not immediately obvious is
the type of storm (or precipitation) that takes place. A winter storm (i.e. snow) will
result in an increase in the river’s discharge when the snow melts but this often won’t
be for a long time, so the lag time will be huge.

If it’s been raining heavily previously, the ground may be waterlogged so the lag time
will be reduced because water will be unable to infiltrate and will instead travel via
overland flow. Similarly, if the climate’s been hot & dry or freezing cold the ground
will be hard and water will once again be unable to infiltrate and will instead travel as
overland flow, reducing the lag time and increasing the peak discharge.

Vegetation Cover

If the area surrounding the river has thick vegetation cover then lots of precipitation
will be intercepted, greatly increasing the lag time. In addition, the peak discharge
will decrease because vegetation will absorb the water and lose it through
transpiration and evaporation.

Human Activity

Humans will normally cover soil in impermeable materials like tarmac or concrete
which will increase surface run off and reduce the amount of water being stored,
increasing the peak discharge and reducing the lag time. As water doesn’t infiltrate
easily in urban areas humans often build storm drains that run directly into a river,
reducing the lag time and increasing the river’s peak discharge.

Long and Cross profiles of a River

A River’s Course

The course a river takes is split into three stages, the upper, middle and lower stage.
In the upper stage, the river is close to its source and high above its base level (the
lowest point the river can erode to 1). In the lower stage the river is far away from its
source, close to the mouth and not far above its base level. In the middle stage, it’s
somewhere in between.

The total energy that a river possesses varies from one stage to another because of
changes in the river’s height, gradient and speed. In the upper course, the gradient
of the river is steep and the river is high above sea level giving it a large amount of
gravitational potential energy that can be converted to kinetic energy later on. In the
middle course, the river’s gravitational potential energy gets converted to kinetic
energy and the gradient begins to level out resulting in the river’s velocity increasing.
By the time the river reaches its lower stage, it has next to no gravitational potential
energy but lots of kinetic energy resulting in a high velocity.

The Long Profile

The long profile shows how a river’s gradient changes as it flows from its source to
its mouth. You can draw a diagram of a river’s long profile either by drawing a quick
sketch based on some previous knowledge or by plotting the height of the river
above sea level at various points in its course. A sketch of a long profile would look
something like this:
River Cross Profiles

River cross profiles show you a cross-section of a river’s channel and valley at

certain points in the river’s course. The cross profile of a river changes as it moves
from the upper to lower course as a result of changes in the river’s energy and the
processes that the river carries out.

In the upper course, the valley and channel are narrow and deep as a result of the
large amount of vertical erosion and little lateral erosion. The sides of a river’s valley
in the upper course are very steep earning these valleys the nickname “V-Shaped
Valley” since they look like a letter V. The river’s valley can be anything from a few
meters to a few hundred metres in width depending on the lithology but the channel
rarely more than 5m or 6m wide.

Waterfalls
A waterfall is a steep drop in the course of a river. They form when a band of hard resistant
rock (cap rock) lies over softer, less resistant rock.
The softer rock is quickly eroded by hydraulic action and abrasion, causing the harder rock
to be undercut.
The hard rock overhangs until it can no longer carry its own weight.
The overhang collapses and then breaks up in the water below.
The great power of the water at the base of the waterfall causes a plunge pool to form.
The bed of the river below the waterfall contains boulders eroded by splash back from
behind the waterfall.
A gorge- is a steep-sided, narrow valley with a river or stream running
along the bottom. Gorges are formed by the interplay of several
geological processes, including erosion, tectonic processes such as
vertical uplift and cavern collapse. Erosion by the resident body of
water is usually the primary contributor to gorge formation.
Over time the process above is frequently repeated and eventually a
steep-sided gorge forms as the waterfall retreats up stream.
Streams carve through hard layers of rock, breaking down or eroding
it. Sediment from the worn-away rock is then carried downstream. Over
time, this erosion will form the steep walls of a gorge. The flooding of
streams or rivers increases the speed and intensity of this erosion,
creating deeper and wider gorges
Meanders
A meander is a winding curve or bend in a river. Meanders are the
result of both erosional and depositional processes. They are typical of
the middle and lower course of a river. This is because vertical erosion
is replaced by a sideways form of erosion called LATERAL erosion,
plus deposition within the floodplain.
The inside of the bend called a slip-off slope or point bar, and a
concave section on the opposite bank of the river on the outer bend
called a river cliff or bluff.
The initial cause of meandering rivers is related to the way in which
different types of flow within a river:
laminar flow – horizontal movement in a plane.
turbulent flow – horizontal and vertical eddies in the water sometimes
producing mini-whirlpools
helicoidal flow – corkscrew movement of water which is thought to
transport eroded material downstream from one meander bend to the
next
The increase in discharge typically found in the middle course leads to an
increase in the rate of erosion (both vertical and lateral) and the formation
of pools in the channel. The rate of formation of pools increases in times of
higher discharge and leads to more efficient movement of water. In
addition, erosion of the channel causes there to be an increase in the
availability of material being transported. This material is often deposited
further along the channel in less efficient sections with a lower velocity, to
form riffles. Riffles reduce the efficiency of channel flow still further by
increasing the wetted perimeter (the length of channel in contact with
water) and consequently increases friction. This reduces the velocity of the
water and leads to further deposition. Coarse particles in riffles are more
angular and generate greater flow resistance than the fine particles in pools
so more energy is expended as water flows over them (the water is
shallower). This, in turn, encourages further deposition. Pools have a
shallower sediment gradient so less energy is expended by the deeper
water flowing over them, further increasing channel efficiency.
The meander ratio or sinuosity index is a means of quantifying how much a river
or stream meanders (how much its course deviates from the shortest possible
path). It is calculated as the length of the stream divided by the length of the valley.
OX BOW LAKES

An oxbow lake starts out as a curve, or meander, in a river. A lake forms as the river
finds a different, shorter, course. The meander becomes an oxbow lake along the
side of the river. Oxbow lakes usually form in flat, low-lying plains close to where the
river empties into another body of water.