Hydrologic Cycle / Surface Water Processes
Terms to learn are in BOLD in the outline below:
Topic outline:
- Hydrologic cycle
- Drainage basin (watershed)
- Stream valley
- Drainage divide
- Drainage patterns - dendritic, radial, rectangular, trellis
- Stream processes
- Streamflow
- Factors affecting streamflow velocity
- Stream gradient
- Stream discharge
- Competence versus Capacity
- Erosion
- Transportation
- Stream load - bed, suspended, dissolved
- Areas of deposition - delta, alluvial fan, point bar, natural levee
- Stream evolution
- V-shape
- Base-level
- meandering - oxbow lake
Interesting places to visit:
General info on streams and floods: http://www.mhhe.com/earthsci/geology/mcconnell/streams/
Great site on flooding: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/flood/
Another great site on floods: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/infocus/floods.html
Good review: http://www.mhhe.com/earthsci/geology/plummer/student/olc/chap10intro.mhtml
When you are finished with this topic, you should be able to answer these questions:
- What is the hydrologic cycle?
- What factors influence the velocity of a stream?
- What is stream gradient and how does it change over the longitudinal stream profile?
- What are the types of stream load?
- What is the difference between a delta and an alluvial fan?
- How are oxbow lakes formed?
- How are floodplains formed and what are natural levees?
- What controls how far down a stream erodes?
