1. Another Important Abiotic Factor
Water,
Another Important Abiotic Factor
(just like soil)

2. Remember the Water Cycle?

3. Two Types of Liquid Water:
(based on its location)
Groundwater – water located beneath the ground surface in between soil spaces.
Surface water – water collecting on the ground or in a stream, river, lake, sea or ocean.

4. Surface water

5. How Do You Get the Two Types?
It rains or precipitation happens,
If the ground is dry, it absorbs water like a sponge,
This becomes groundwater,
When the ground can no longer hold anymore water,
The rain starts to runoff the surface of the land,
This runoff goes into streams, rivers, & lakes and becomes surface water.

6. Let’s Take a Look at Surface Water

7. Remember, water that is not absorbed by the ground runs-off and becomes surface water

8. Definition:
Runoff - water that flows over the land surface. It becomes surface water like lakes, streams, rivers, and eventually the oceans.

9. What Makes a River Flow?
Ocean
…gravity, water from snow or rain falls on higher ground and flows to a lower point, typically the ocean.

10. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
High Ground
Mountains
Upstream
Low Ground
The Ocean
Downstream
Water Flow

11. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Drainage Basin

12. Definition:
Drainage basin - the land areas that gathers precipitation water and directs it to a particular stream.

13. Drainage Basin – sometimes used in a larger sense to include all the land that drains into a river system.

14. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Divide

15. Definition:
Divide - the ridge of land that separates two adjacent drainage basins.

16. Pacific Ocean
Atlantic Ocean

17. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Floodplain

18. Definition:
Floodplain - flat or nearly flat land adjacent to a stream or river that experiences occasional or periodic flooding

19. Definition:
floodplain -

20. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Meander

21. Definition:
meander –
a winding, turning bend in a river

22. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Oxbow lakes

23. Definition:
Ox bow lake - a type of lake which is formed when a wide meander from a stream or a river is cut off to form a lake.

24. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Delta

25. Definition:
Delta - a landform where the mouth of a river flows into an ocean, sea, desert, estuary or lake.
The Nile River Delta

26. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Watershed

27. Definition:
watershed - the region of land whose water drains into a specified body of water
animation

28. South Carolina Rivers Map
Edisto River Watershed area
Other S.C. Watersheds

29. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Alluvial Fan

30. Definition:
Alluvial fan -a fan-shaped deposit formed where a fast flowing stream flattens, slows, and spreads typically at the exit of a canyon onto a flatter plain

31. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
sediments

32. Definition:
sediments- loose pieces of sand, silt and clay that come from the process of weathering and erosion that settle at the bottom of rivers and lakes

33. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
Dams – man-made

34. Definition:
dams- man made structure created for flood control that can create lakes for recreation and water storage. Some dams can create hydroelectricity.

35. Parts of a River – 3 sections
From the Reading Guide:
Parts of a River – 3 sections
Looking from above
trunk
Tributaries
Distributaries
eutrophication

36. Definition:
eutrophication- an increase in the nutrients and organisms in the life of a lake that eventually causes the lake to become dry land.