Product Description
River Rythyms Canvas Prints
River Rythyms Canvas Prints
A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and stream banks. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as a branch, brook, beck, burn, creek, crick, stream age, wash, run, or runnel. Streams are important as conduits in the water cycle, instruments in groundwater recharge, and corridors for fish and wildlife migration. The biological habitat in the immediate vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone. The study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core element of environmental geography. A stream is smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep. It is usually small and easily forded. Streams typically derive most of their water from precipitation in the form of rain and snow. Most of this water re-enters the atmosphere bye evaporation from soil and water bodies. Some of the water proceeds to sink into the earth by infiltration and becomes groundwater, much of which eventually enters streams. Some precipitated water is temporarily locked up in snow fields and glaciers, to be released later by evaporation or melting. The rest of the water flows off the land as runoff, the proportion of which varies according to many factors, such as wind, humidity, vegetation, rock types, and relief. This runoff starts as a thin film called sheet wash, combined with a network of tiny rills, when this water is concentrated in a channel, a stream has its birth. Some creeks may start from ponds or lakes. Streams can carry sediment, or alluvium. The amounts of load it can carry as well as the largest object it can carry are both dependent on the velocity of the stream.
