The Evolution of

Stream-Eroded
Landscapes
• Stream-eroded landscapes evolve over time. When the base level
drops, streams down cut, and a hilly landscape develops. The
resulting relief, however, eventually erodes away.
• When the land surface rises or the base level falls, stream
rejuvenation takes place, meaning that a stream flowing over the land
surface starts to down cut once again.
• As stream-eroded landscapes evolve, puzzling landscapes develop
locally. For example, some streams flow through a canyon that cuts
straight across a mountain ridge.
• Geologists call such streams superposed streams because their pre-
existing geometry has been laid down over underlying geologic
structures.
SUPERPOSED STREAMS
ANTECEDENT STREAMS
STREAM PIRACY
 Raging Waters: River Flooding and Flood
Control
• Streams can cause havoc during a flood, an event in which the volume
of water flowing down a stream exceeds the volume of the stream
channel.
• Alternatively, floods can be classified based on how fast they develop.
• We’ll take the latter approach here and distinguish between slow-
onset floods (which develop over several days and take days to weeks
to subside) and flash floods (which develop in minutes to hours and
subside in hours).
SLOW ONSET FLOODS
• Slow-onset floods happen (1) during the spring after a winter of
heavy snows, when temperatures rise and widespread melting of the
snowpack begins; (2) during the sustained rains of a distinct wet
season, such as the monsoon season of Asia when winds shift and
blow moist air from the oceans over the land for weeks on end and a
large region gets drenched; or (3) when a system of storms remains
stationary over a broad region for a long time.
• If slow-onset floods are tied to an annual weather pattern, Earth
scientists may also refer to them as seasonal floods.
Flash Floods
•An event during which the discharge of a
stream increases so fast that it may be
impossible to escape from the path of
the water is a flash flood.
LAKES

•Lakes are bodies of standing

water that occur on land and
are not directly connected to
the sea