How does a river change as it travels

downstream?

Day 1: River Glaven AIMS:

Deliver SKILLS requirements of:
a. Consider the design of fieldwork data collection sheets.
b. Collect data with an understanding of accuracy, sample size,
reliability.
c. Make predictions, and be able to follow them up using data collected.
d. Be able to identify weaknesses in statistical presentations of data.
e. Draw and justify conclusions from numerical and statistical data.
e
 What does a river 'do'?

• A river erodes
• Erosion involves the wearing away of rock and soil found along the
river bed and banks. Erosion also involves the breaking down of the
rock particles being carried downstream by the river.
• The four main forms of river erosion
• Hydraulic action - the force of the river against the banks can cause
air to be trapped in cracks and crevices. The pressure weakens the
banks and gradually wears it away.
• Abrasion - rocks carried along by the river wear down the river bed
and banks.
• Attrition - rocks being carried by the river smash together and
break into smaller, smoother and rounder particles.
• Solution - soluble particles are dissolved into the river.
The River Drainage Basin
 Key Terms

You can complete the activity on the top of page 6 in

your booklet from now.
Is the River Glaven going to match this ‘typical’ profile?
Look at your OS map.
 The Bradshaw Model
• This model shows what should happen to
various river characteristics as a river journeys
from source to mouth along its long profile.
• There are many changes that occur in rivers as
a result of changes within the water cycle and
drainage basin. The diagram on the next slide
summarises the changes that occur.
The Bradshaw Model: is a geographical model which describes how a river's characteristics vary between the
upper course and lower course of a river.

It is depicted below as a series of triangles:

•If the triangle gets wider towards the downstream section it means that on average that variable increases with
increasing distance downstream.
•If the triangle decreases in size it means that on average the variable decreases with increasing distance towards
the mouth.

Key words

Velocity: how fast the water moves

over a specified distance (speed =
distance/time)

Discharge: the amount of water

passing a certain point of a river over a
period of time.

Channel bed roughness: a measure

of how much resistance there is to the
river’s flow.

Slope angle/Gradient: The degree

to which something inclines.
 How does a river change as we go downstream?

Variable Unit How will this change? Why?

Channel depth

Channel width

Wetted perimeter

Bedload size

Bedload shape

Velocity
Please refer to page 8 in your booklet.
You can complete the Key Terms list on Page 6.
Discharge (amount of
water)

Gradient
 Our fieldwork on the River Glaven
• Thinking about what you have just re-capped on
rivers, you have pages 9, 10 and 11 in your
booklet to complete before we head out to the
River.
• Page 9-What do you expect we will find happens
to the River? Write three hypotheses to predict.
• Page 10-What equipment will you use? How? To
measure what?
• Page 11-What will you do to obtain the data you
need? Plan your fieldwork methods.
Let’s go measure our River!
 Follow up activities.
• 1. In your groups, complete the two cross
section drawings to show how the depth of
the rivers change across their width. Use the
same scale to make comparisons easier.
• 2. Complete the follow up activities: pebble
analysis mean, median and mode statistics
sheet.
• 3. Complete the conclusions sheet.