GCSE Geography Coursework: Water Of Leith

The chemical characteristics observed and documented were pH, temperature, phosphate, nitrate, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen. Each of these chemical levels were documented and found differently. Most were found using a kit or a device. The numbers found, would tell us how polluted the stream was and how much nutrients were in the water. Each chemical has a scale for telling what a good level is and what a bad level is. If an excess amount of nutrients was found in the water, algae could be formed. When algae is formed it blocks sunlight from shining into the water, which creates dead zones. This is called eutrophication. A dead zone is an area where there is no life. This can cause major problems like population issues and more. If the algae continues to grow in the river, the whole body of water can die out, and people as well as other organisms are very dependent on the Susquehanna. While on the river though, there was an absence of algae, so sunlight is able to get through the water, which is very good.

Rivers have had enormous amounts of destructive power. They have caused mass floods that have damaged towns and cities surrounding them, and have also caused damage to families, taking lives. With all of this damage that has been caused by rivers though, they have given back, with thriving life and people surrounding them for their beauty and resources. One of the most important things they have done is carve out landscapes, which create legacies to their existence. In fact, these rivers are the largest formers of the Earth’s modern landscape (even in places where it does not seem

The river plays an important role in North Carolina’s estuaries found in the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound as it dumps its nutrient-dense waters into the estuaries to feed the system. One of only three rivers to be totally contained within North Carolina’s borders, the river has been noted to have the widest mouth in the continental

The site chosen for this report is the Moolap Waterfront and its hinterland. It is located 5km East of the City Centre of Geelong, South -west of Melbourne, Victoria. The site is generally flat topography with a significant coastal frontage and it’s considered to be a flood prone area.(This should go up)

Now that the definition of stream has been defined and a few of its key characteristics discussed, the specific geographical characteristics of Plaster Creek

Our sites (Figure 1.) were spread along the lowest reach of Merri Creek before it runs into the Yarra River. As a direct result of this there is an extensive valley from the constant presence of fluvial processes over geological time. The landform patterns at our sites were extensively governed by the movement and availability of water, with escarpments, gullies, cliffs and spurs of varying steepness all observed.

The River Stinchar and its tributaries, the ferly burn and the Dalquairne burn show patterns which follow the Bradshaw Model to a large extent.

When I observed the stream table I noticed that, the water was moving the sediments so powerful and it made a deep path through the sediments.To explain, the water was powerful enough to move something in seconds while for most children, it takes minutes to even make a distinguished hole in the sand. Also, in the stream table I observed that, the water created a small delta in the “stream “.This means, that even in a small classroom experiment it created a small version of a landform.Adding on, in my stream table observations I also noticed that even though there wasn’t much water so much happened with the sediments.To explain, when Mrs.Rodis poured the water at first it was a very small amount but it impacted the sediments so fast.Water is a very powerful resource it can impact through both weathering and

The mean for 100-year flood at ungauged river sites within the Apalachicola-ChattahoocheeFlint (ACF) River Basin is 8855.824, this value is importance in that it tells us the average of our data. The standard deviation is 5709.88 which gives us the summary the amount by which every value within a dataset varies from the mean. The max value of the data is 33300. As shown in the appendix figure 1 Illustrated Boxplot of the annual peak streamflow of with mean of 8856, the median of 6440, first quartile of 5260, third quartile of 10950, min of 2350 and max of 33300.The correlation coefficient between Peak and zp is 0.8895443 and the correlation coefficient between lnPeak and zp is 0.9829135.Figure 2 illustrated Histogram Plot of Annual Peak

We only passed a few rivers as most waterways we pasted were creeks. The most common way rivers are formed here are creeks running together making big deep rivers that flow through the country but on the rear occasion you will get a rubber feet by the lake that has overflowed.

The substrate that the river flows over has an effect on the interaction between groundwater and the bottom of the river. If the river is flowing over an impermeable substrate e.g. shale, mudstone, any crystalline rock etc. and then erodes through that impermeable substrate the river could cease to exist. The substrate has a major effect on the river. The substrate can determine what type of river is formed, how much sediment the river is transporting, how much erosion is occurring in the river etc. The substrate is a very import factor when anyone is studying a

According to the topographic map of Merri Creek in Clifton Hill( Figure 1), we can identified that the Merri Creek pass an inner plains. This sub-river flows about 60 km from the Great Dividing Range through the northern suburbs of Melbourne to the Yarra River. It is presents on the contour map that the highest elevation is 30 meters and the lowest is 20 meters. There also displayed that the Merri Creek as a boundary, the left hand and the right hand share the similar elevation hight. This kind of landform lead to the Merri Creek crossed by only a few small and weakly incised tributary streams.(Faithfull, n.d.) So this part can have various function, for instance, as a natural park, industrial zone or living area. Besides, the Merri Creek

Last is embeddedness, where Traver Creek scored a 2.8, an increase of 0.1 points. Out of the four scores, 3 were between two and three on the four-point scale, which would place their condition in between “fair” and “good”, and and out of all four statistics, there was a change of 0.15 points at most over the past year, with bank erosion remaining the same. These statistics line up with the claim of a creek in fair health and little change. However, there is one major change, which was a shift in the speed at which the river flowed, from 2.22 ft/s to only 0.73 ft/s. This is a dramatic shift, which takes the flow speed of the river outside the ideal flow rate of 2-4 ft/sec.

Seasonal influences may also significantly affect the position of the shoreline indicator relative to the land–water interface (Moore, 2000; Smith et al., 1990). Storminess and short-term shoreline variability are also significant factors that need to be taken into account when assessing longer-term trends of shoreline change (Crowell et al., 1993; Fenster et al., 2001; Honeycutt et al., 2001; List et al., 1999; Morton, 1991; Smith et al., 1990; Zhang et al., 2002). Historical land-based photographs provide general background information to the coastal investigator, such as the presence of a specific morphological feature such as a sand spit or channel entrance. However, most land-based photos are by definition very oblique, with limited information

Gravel bed rivers are comprised of sediment particle sizes between 2-64mm, but may also include a degree of sand as high as 50% (Bunte and Abt 2001). This wide array of particle sizes can affect the rates of erosion, deposition, and overall morphology of a river. Understanding the rate and likelihood of these processes is crucial in comprehending contemporary river environments, their behaviour and surrounding ecology. Detailed characteristics and processes of gravel bed rivers is not well understood as there are considerable variabilities at the bar, reach and river scales (Rice and Church 2009). In an attempt to advance understanding of the processes and mechanisms involved, analysis of the sediment is required. To quantify the size and distribution of sediment in a river, a large sample set is needed in order to be fully representative of the area surveyed, but this is more complex in gravel bedded rivers than sand as distribution can be either heterogeneous or homogenous (Bunte and Abt 2001). Considering this, sampling methods must be chosen appropriately and in accordance of objectives of the study in order to gain data specific and useful enough to address them. This report aims to address the characterisation of grain size distribution of both the bar-scale and reach-scale of the River Ashop, in the Peak District. To do this, two methods have been utilised: Wolman sampling (1954), and advanced digital granulometry (Graham et al. 2005). Patterns and distribution