•Understanding Main Ideas
Answer the following questions on a separate piece of paper.
1. What factors determine whether water soaks into the ground or flows over the ground as runoff?
The nature of the ground, the rate of the rainfall, and the slope of the land.
2. Draw a simple sketch of a river system. Include and label the following: headwaters. Tributary, oxbow lake, meander, flood plain, delta, and mouth.
3. This picture shows river meander. Name and describe the process that is occurring at Point A and the process that is occurring at Point B.
Point A: Erosion- the water breaks off fragments of soil and rock from outer curve of the riverbank.
Point B: Deposition – fragments of soil and rock being carried by the water are dropped along the inner curve of the riverbank.
4. How can building up natural levees with stone and concrete often make flooding worse downstream? The built-up levees prevent the natural channel widening process that rivers normally undergo as the volume increases. As a result, floodwaters have nowhere to go except downstream.
•Building Vocabulary
Choose the word that best completes each sentence.
5. The land area that supplies water to a river system is called a(n)
Watershed or drainage basin.
6. Water that flows over the ground surface is called
Runoff
7. The broad, flat valley through which a river flows is a(n)
Floodplain
8. A ridge of land that separates one watershed from another is a(n)
Divide
9. A looping curve in a river is a(n)
Meander
10. The process by which fragments of soil and rock are left behind as moving water slows down is called