erosion and deposition vocab

Bedrock

The solid rock underneath the soil

Meander

Curves, bends, and turns in a river or stream. The water does not travel in a straight path

Cutbank

A cliff or steep edge around the outside bend of a water channel (river or stream) where there is constant erosion

Oxbow Lake

A crescent shaped lake formed where water flow from a meandering stream gets cut off because the water cuts across and makes a different path, no longer flowing around the loop of the bend

Discharge rate

The amount of water that is flowing and its velocity

Stream Load

Any type of sediment being carried to a different place by a river/stream

Pointbar

A low, curved ridge of sand and gravel along the inner bank of a meandering stream

Outwash

Areas/beds of sand and gravel deposited by melt water from glaciers

Erratic

Pieces of solid bedrock that have been lifted and moved by glacier ice that is then left on /above thin glacial

Kettle Lake

Depression in ground formed by the melting of a block of glacier ice buried or partially buried by drift which forms a small body of water

Floodplain

An area of low lying ground beside a river that often floods

Hydrosphere

The water (even frozen ice) that is on the surface of the planet, underground, and in the air

Lithosphere

The rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle

Esker

A long winding ridge of gravel and other sediment left by a glacier; deposited by the meltwater from underneath glaciers

Moraine

a mass of rocks and sediment carried down and deposited by a glacier, typically as ridges at its edges or extremity

Till

The "leftover" rock fragments that range from small boulder size and randomly mixed

Weathering

The various mechanical and chemical processes that cause exposed rock to decompose

Deposition

When sediments, soil and rocks are added to a land form or land mass

Erosion

When water, ice or wind remove sediment from one location on Earth's crust, then move it to another location where it is deposited

Gradient

Slope of a stream bed or a hill