The work carried out by a river

► Erosion: material is worn away and removed from its channel (the river bed
and banks)
► This can cause rivers to become deeper and/or wider
► Boulders, pebbles, sand, silt and mud are eroded by the river and carried
downstream by the process of transportation
► The river’s load is the material being transported
► When the river no longer has the energy to carry it’s load its dropped to the
river bed – which is called deposition
► The largest material is deposited first
► The lightest material is deposited last

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 Types of erosion

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Lidia Califano
 ► Erosion takes place when discharge is high and acts on the landscape in
three ways:
► Vertical Erosion: Near the source, a river cuts down into its bed, deepening
the valley.
► Lateral Erosion: In the middle and lower courses of the river, the sides of the
bed are eroded away. This widens the valley
► Headward Erosion: Takes place at the source. It causes the river valley to
grow very slowly upstream.

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 Deposition happens when

► There is a decrease in gradient

► There is a decrease in river flow
(discharge) as water drains away
after heavy rain
► The river meets the sea or a lake –
forming a delta
► The river flows more slowly on the
inside of bends

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Lidia Califano
 The river channel

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 MOZAMBIQUE - FLOODS
► February 2000: Zambezi, Limpopo and Save rivers flood
Many of the country’s 19m people live on the floodplains of these
rivers
► - most of the population are farmers, and these are the most fertile
soils
► The banks of the Limpopo river burst, causing severe flood damage
► About 2 weeks later, Cyclone Eline hit the Mozambique coast near
Beira, north of the areas previously affected by flooding
► Flash floods inundated low farmlands around Chokwe + Xai-Xai - more
than 180,000 people affected
► Dirt roads easily turned to mud + so it took 2 days for a food lorry to
travel 200 miles from the port at Beira to Caia, the town used as a
food distribution centre
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