A report on River and Stream

The Amazon River (dark blue) and the rivers which flow into it (medium blue).
Aubach (Wiehl) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
The start of a mountain stream.
Rocky stream in Italy
Melting toe of Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada
Frozen stream in Enäjärvi, Pori, Finland
The Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend, Arizona
Stream near Montriond in southeastern France
The Porvoo River (Porvoonjoki) in the medieval town of Porvoo, Finland
Wyming Brook in Sheffield, UK
Nile River delta, as seen from Earth orbit. The Nile is an example of a wave-dominated delta that has the classic Greek letter delta (Δ) shape after which river deltas were named.
A small stream in Lake Parramatta, Sydney
A radar image of a 400 km river of methane and ethane near the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan
Stream with low gradient surrounded by natural riparian vegetation (Rhineland-Palatinate)
River meandering course
A low level stream in Macon County, Illinois, US
Flash flooding caused by a large amount of rain falling in a short amount of time
Small tributary stream, Diamond Ridge, Alaska, US
The mouth of the River Seaton in Cornwall after heavy rain caused flooding and significant erosion of the beach.
Creek in Perisher Ski Resort, Australia
Frozen river in Alaska
Stream in Southbury, US
Leisure activities on the River Avon at Avon Valley Country Park, Keynsham, United Kingdom. A boat giving trips to the public passes a moored private boat.
Australian creek, low in the dry season, carrying little water. The energetic flow of the stream had, in flood, moved finer sediment further downstream. There is a pool to lower right and a riffle to upper left of the photograph.
Watermill in Belgium.
Stream in Alberta
River bank repair
A small, narrow stream flowing down a tiny dell in Pennsylvania.

A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river.

- River

Long large streams are usually called rivers, while smaller, less voluminous and more intermittent streams are known as streamlets, brooks or creeks.

- Stream
The Amazon River (dark blue) and the rivers which flow into it (medium blue).

11 related topics with Alpha

Overall
Diagram of a river's left and right banks

Bank (geography)

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Land alongside a body of water.

Land alongside a body of water.

Diagram of a river's left and right banks
A sloping sandy point bar (close side) and the vegetation-stabilized cut bank (far side) on the Namoi River in New South Wales, Australia. These two constitute the banks of the river.
A man-made lake in Keukenhof with grass banks
An eastern bank of the Pielisjoki in Joensuu, Finland

In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrain alongside the bed of a river, creek, or stream.

Vivari Channel in Albania links Lake Butrint with the Straits of Corfu.

Channel (geography)

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Type of landform consisting of the outline of a path of relatively shallow and narrow body of water or of other fluids , most commonly the confine of a river, river delta or strait.

Type of landform consisting of the outline of a path of relatively shallow and narrow body of water or of other fluids , most commonly the confine of a river, river delta or strait.

Vivari Channel in Albania links Lake Butrint with the Straits of Corfu.
Wooden pilings mark the navigable channel for vessels entering Lake George from the St. Johns River in Florida.

A stream channel is the physical confine of a stream (river) consisting of a bed and stream banks.

A stream bed armored with rocks

Stream bed

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A stream bed armored with rocks
The old bed of the Mississippi River near Kaskaskia, Illinois, left behind after the river shifted
A woman digs in a dry stream bed in Kenya to find water during a drought.

A stream bed or streambed is the channel bottom of a stream or river, the physical confine of the normal water flow.

Flooding in a street in Morpeth, England. Flooding is increasing with extreme weather events caused by climate change are creating rainfall events with much more rain than in the past. Cities and towns built on waterbodies or with infrastructure designed around historical rainfall patterns are increasingly susceptible to urban flooding.

Flood

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Overflow of water that submerges land that is usually dry.

Overflow of water that submerges land that is usually dry.

Flooding in a street in Morpeth, England. Flooding is increasing with extreme weather events caused by climate change are creating rainfall events with much more rain than in the past. Cities and towns built on waterbodies or with infrastructure designed around historical rainfall patterns are increasingly susceptible to urban flooding.
Contemporary picture of the flood that struck the North Sea coast of Germany and Denmark in October 1634.
People seeking refuge from flood in Jawa Tengah, Java. ca. 1865–1876.
View of flooded New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans, because it is on a River Delta and experiences Hurricanes, has historically been very vulnerable to flooding. Katrina's extreme rainfall and poor infrastructure maintenance led to a levee breach which flooded large portions of the city.
"Regular" flooding in Venice, Italy.
Flooding of a creek due to heavy monsoonal rain and high tide in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
Flood in Jeddah, covering the King Abdullah Street in Saudi Arabia.
In spring time, the floods are quite typical in Ostrobothnia, a flat-lying area in Finland. A flood-surrounded house in Ilmajoki, South Ostrobothnia.
Flooding on Water Street in Toledo, Ohio, 1881
Flood due to Cyclone Hudhud in Visakhapatnam
A dog sitting on top of 2 feet of mud deposited by flooding in the 2018 Kerala floods in India. Flooding not only creates water damage, but can also deposit large amounts of sediment.
Coastal flooding in a Florida community.
Flooding after 1991 Bangladesh cyclone, which killed around 140,000 people.
Flooding near Key West, Florida, United States from Hurricane Wilma's storm surge in October 2005.
Flooding in a street of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil in April 2013.
Minor flooding in a parking lot off Juniper street Atlanta on Christmas Eve from thunderstorms caused by an El Nino event. The same El Nino caused recorded highs for January in Atlanta
Flash flooding caused by heavy rain falling in a short amount of time.
Dozens of villages were inundated when rain pushed the rivers of northwestern Bangladesh over their banks in early October 2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured the top image of the flooded Ghaghat and Atrai Rivers on October 12, 2005. The deep blue of the rivers is spread across the countryside in the flood image.
Aftermath of flooding in Colorado, 2013
Flood rescue in Nangarhar, Afghanistan in 2010, accompanied by the Afghan Air Force and USAF air advisors

Flooding may occur as an overflow of water from water bodies, such as a river, lake, or ocean, in which the water overtops or breaks levees, resulting in some of that water escaping its usual boundaries, or it may occur due to an accumulation of rainwater on saturated ground in an areal flood.

Floods occur in all types of river and stream channels, from the smallest ephemeral streams in humid zones to normally-dry channels in arid climates to the world's largest rivers.

A well-preserved natural riparian strip on a tributary to Lake Erie

Riparian zone

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A well-preserved natural riparian strip on a tributary to Lake Erie
Thick riparian vegetation along the Pisuerga River in Spain
Riparian zone along Trout Creek in the Trout Creek Mountains, part of the Burns Bureau of Land Management District in southeastern Oregon. The creek provides critical habitat for trout.
250px
alt=A rocky, brown stream bank mostly bare of vegetation, with a few aspen trees in the background|Cottonwood Creek riparian area in southeastern Oregon before restoration, 1988
alt=The same stream bank lined with short grasses, with more aspen trees in the background|Cottonwood Creek riparian area during recovery, 2000
alt=The same stream bank lined with higher grasses that obscure most of the water, with a thicker aspen grove behind|Cottonwood Creek riparian area after restoration, 2002

A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream.

Streamflow

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Streamflow, or channel runoff, is the flow of water in streams and other channels, and is a major element of the water cycle.

Rivers are major aquatic landscapes for all manners of plants and animals.

Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Indonesia is the largest volcanic lake in the world

Lake

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Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Indonesia is the largest volcanic lake in the world
Lake Sevan is the largest body of water in Armenia and the Caucasus region. It is one of the largest freshwater high-altitude (alpine) lakes in Eurasia.
Peyto Lake in Alberta, Western Canada
Oeschinen Lake in the Swiss Alps
Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada
Atro/Attar Lake and pass, Ishkoman Valley, Gilgit-Baltistan
There are some 187,888 lakes in Finland larger than 500 square metres. Isojärvi is Finland's 97th-largest lake.
The shores of Lake Peipus, the fifth-largest lake in Europe, near the town of Kallaste in Estonia
The Seven Rila Lakes are a group of glacial lakes in the Bulgarian Rila mountains.
The crater lake of Mount Rinjani, Indonesia
Lake Kaniere is a glacial lake in the West Coast region of New Zealand.
The Nowitna River in Alaska. Two oxbow lakes – a short one at the bottom of the picture and a longer, more curved one at the middle-right.
These kettle lakes in Alaska were formed by a retreating glacier.
Ice melting on Lake Balaton in Hungary
Lakes can have significant cultural importance. The West Lake of Hangzhou has inspired romantic poets throughout the ages, and has been an important influence on garden designs in China, Japan and Korea.
Lake Mapourika, New Zealand
Five Flower Lake in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan
Lake Teletskoye, Siberia
Lake of Flowers (Liqeni i Lulëve), one of the Lurë Mountains glacial lakes, Albania
Cross sectional diagram of limnological lake zones (left) and algal community types (right)
Ephemeral 'Lake Badwater', a lake only noted after heavy winter and spring rainfall, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, 9 February 2005. Landsat 5 satellite photo
Badwater Basin dry lake, 15 February 2007. Landsat 5 satellite photo
Titan's north polar hydrocarbon seas and lakes, as seen in a false-color Cassini synthetic aperture radar mosaic
The Caspian Sea is either the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea
Round Tangle Lake, one of the Tangle Lakes, 2,864 feet (873 m) above sea level in interior Alaska

A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake.

Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams, which usually flow in a channel on land.

The Nam Khan flows into the Mekong at Luang Prabang in Laos.

Tributary

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The Nam Khan flows into the Mekong at Luang Prabang in Laos.
At Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, looking downstream, the Shenandoah River (bottom right) meets the Potomac River, which flows from bottom left to top right. So the Shenandoah is a right tributary of the Potomac, not a left tributary.
The basin of the Amazon River is a system made up of many tributary streams. The streams shown on the map besides the Amazon are tributaries of the Amazon.
The Benue River is fed by multiple tributaries originating in the Adamawa Plateau; many of the highest tributaries are seasonal streams. The Benue is itself a major tributary of the Niger.
Huai River (itself a tributary of the Yangtze) and tributaries
Jialing River (itself a tributary of the Yangtze) and tributaries
The Liao River is a much simpler example of a river basin with tributaries. The main tributaries noted on this map are the Hun River, Taizi River, Dongliao River, Xinkai River, Xiliao River, Xar Moron River and the Laoha River. The Xiliao River's tributaries are the Xar Moron and Laoha rivers.
The Mekong is a trans-boundary river, originating in the Tibetan Plateau. Its upper tributary river systems (e.g. the Salween River) are restricted to narrow gorges, but the tributaries that feed its lower reaches (e.g. the Mun River) cover larger areas.
The water basin of the Wabash River; the other rivers (not including the Ohio River) are tributaries of the Wabash River. The Vermillion River (and its forks) is a highlighted example of a tributary of the Wabash River. The Wabash River is also a tributary of the Ohio River, which in turn is a tributary of the Mississippi River.
The Yamuna is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges and the longest tributary in India. It flows almost parallel to the Ganges about its right bank for {{convert|1376|km}} before merging with it at the Triveni Sangam, Allahabad.

A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake.

River Wey near its source at Farringdon

River source

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River Wey near its source at Farringdon
A stone near Crissolo, Italy, inscribed: Here is born the Po
Rhume Spring, source of the Rhume river

The headwaters of a river or stream is the farthest place in that river or stream from its estuary or downstream confluence with another river, as measured along the course of the river.

Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's tallest waterfall at 979 m (3,212 ft).

Waterfall

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Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's tallest waterfall at 979 m (3,212 ft).
Formation of a waterfall
The Dettifoss in Iceland on 31 July 1972
An example of an ephemeral waterfall. This one, when flowing, feeds into the Chagrin River.
Niagara Falls, from the American Side (Frederic Edwin Church, 1867)
A man practicing sādhanā in Japan

A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops.