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This stream operating together with its environment can be thought of as forming a river ecosystem. River ecosystems are flowing waters that drain the landscape, and include the biotic (living) interactions amongst plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (nonliving) physical and chemical interactions of its many parts.
Long-lived river systems can produce a series of terrace surfaces over the course of their geologic lifetime. When rivers flood, sediment deposits in sheets across the floodplain and build up over time. Later, during a time of river erosion, this sediment is cut into, or incised, by the river and flushed downstream. The previous floodplain is ...
Rivers get their alluvium from erosion, which carves rock into canyons and valleys. Rivers have sustained human and animal life for millennia, including the first human civilizations. The organisms that live around or in a river such as fish, aquatic plants, and insects have different roles, including processing organic matter and predation.
Freshwater ecosystems are a subset of Earth's aquatic ecosystems that include the biological communities inhabiting freshwater waterbodies such as lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, springs, bogs, and wetlands. [1] They can be contrasted with marine ecosystems, which have a much higher salinity. Freshwater habitats can be classified by different ...
A river is a natural watercourse, [7] usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, a sea or another river. A few rivers simply flow into the ground and dry up completely without reaching another body of water. Rocky stream in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The water in a river is usually in a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks.
Rivers are regulated by the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Water first enters rivers through precipitation, whether from rainfall, the runoff of water down a slope, the melting of glaciers or snow, or seepage from aquifers beneath the surface of the Earth.
The Great Plains ecoregion comprises a number of water bodies which play an integral role in its unique hydrology. There are thirteen rivers that are considered to be located within the Great Plains region. Most of the rivers that originate in the Rocky Mountain region in the west are a source of irrigation for farms. These rivers benefit ...
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the last remaining large, nearly intact ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of Earth. [1] It is located within the northern Rocky Mountains , in areas of northwestern Wyoming , southwestern Montana , and eastern Idaho , and is about 22 million acres (89,000 km 2 ). [ 2 ]