Land forms Created by River and Glacier system

Geography Notes on Land forms Created by River and Glacier system

In this article we will discuss about various type of Land-form created due the effect of River system and Glacier system. This is an important topic of geography and question generally comes from this topic.

Land-form Created by river system:

Potholes:

• Potholes are cylindrical holes drilled into the bed of a river that vary in depth & diameter from a few centimeters to several meters.
• These are formed due to the whirling impact of the water current in the upper course of the river.
•  These currents erode the river’s bed and create small depressions in it.
• Many potholes are observed in the river bed of the Kukadi, Krishna and Godavari river in Maharashtra.

V-Shaped valley:

• These valleys are found in the mountainous regions.
• V-Shaped valleys are found in the upper course of the river and are a result of both erosion by the river and weathering.
• V-Shaped valleys are deep river valleys with steep sides that look like a letter V.
• A deep and narrow valley with steep sides is called a Gorge.
• Many gorge are found in river Ulhas in Thane district in Maharashtra and the gorge of the river Narmada at Bhedaghat near Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh are well known.

Waterfalls (Geological):

• Waterfalls are formed due to erosion of both hard rock and soft rock.
•  As the river flows over the resistant rock, it falls onto the less resistant rock, eroding it and creating a greater height difference between the two rock types, producing the waterfall.
• Over thousands of years, the repeated collapse of the cap rock and retreat of the waterfall produces a gorge of recession.
• The Niagara Falls on the river Niagara and Jog falls in Karnataka on Sharavathi river are famous waterfalls.

Meanders and Ox-bow lakes:

• Meanders are bends in a river that form as a river’s sinuosity increases.
• The sinuosity of a river is a measurement of how much a river varies from a straight line.
• Meanders are formed due to lateral erosion and as the erosion increases over the period of time, the meanders in the river again start flowing in the straight line.
• Oxbow lakes are an evolution of meanders that undergo extensive deposition and erosion
• When the meanders cut from the main course and water accumulates in this pool then it resembles the shape of the ox bow.

Fan shaped plains:

•  These are formed in the region where the Tributaries Rivers joins the main river.
• These are formed due to the deposition of material carried by the Tributaries Rivers.
• This deposition resembles the shape a Fan like plains.

Flood Plains:

• These are formed due to the overflows of the river and flood in the nearby areas.
• Slit carried by the water gets deposited in flooded areas and formed flat plains on both sides of river.
• The Gangetic plain is a flood plain.

Levees:

• Levees are natural embankments produced, ironically, when a river floods.
• When a river floods, it deposits its load over the flood plain due to a dramatic drop in the river’s velocity as friction increases greatly.
• Repeated floods cause the mounds to build up and form levees.

Delta:

• Delta is a terms coined by Herodotus (The Father of History) after the Greek letter Delta because of the deltoid shaped at the mouth of the Nile river.
• Deltas are depositional landforms found at the mouth of a river where the river meets a body of water with a lower velocity than the river (e.g. a lake or the sea).
• Over the period of time this deposition builds the characteristic geographic pattern of a river delta.
• Sunderbans delta of the Ganga River is the largest in the world.