1. What are the benefits of locating a large city near a river on a floodplain? What problems arise for cities on floodplains?

2. What are tributaries and trunk streams? How do these phenomena fit into drainage basins?

3. What is the difference between a drainage divide and a continental divide?

4. What is an internal drainage basin? Why are lakes found there typically saline?

5. Compare the different types of drainage patterns. Which is the most common on Earth’s surface?

6. What happens to stream order when a first-order stream merges with a second-order stream? What happens when two second-order streams merge? What order of stream is the Amazon River?

7. Compare and contrast intermittent, permanent, ephemeral, and exotic streams.

8. What is fluvial erosion? Why is it the most important agent of erosion?

9. What is headward erosion? How do rills and gullies relate to headward erosion?

10. What is downcutting? Where does it occur?

11. What is stream discharge? What four main factors determine stream discharge?

12. What is a stream hydrograph? Compare natural stream discharge with discharge of streams in urbanized areas.

13. What is abrasion? How does it relate to fluvial erosion?

14. What is a stream load? List three types of stream loads.

15. Compare stream capacity with stream competence. What factors increase each?

16. In what situations do stream capacity and stream competence decrease? What happens to the stream load when they decrease?

17. What does it mean to say that a stream is graded? Compare a graded stream with one that is not graded.

18. What is base level?

19. Why do some streams have V-shaped valley walls, while others form slot canyons?

20. What is a knickpoint? Why do knickpoints migrate upstream?

21. What is stream rejuvenation? What rejuvenates a stream? What do streams do once they are rejuvenated?

22. How do entrenched meanders and stream terraces form?

23. What is a water gap? Explain how this landform forms in the context of geologic uplift.

24. What is stream piracy? How does one stream divert another?

25. What does it mean to say that streams “sort” their load? Why is it sorted? How is it sorted?

26. What is aggradation? Where does it occur? How does it relate to stream capacity and stream competence?

27. What are braided streams? Where do they form?

28. What are alluvial fans? Where do they form?

29. What is a stream meander? What is a thalweg, and how does it relate to stream meander development? How are point bars and cut banks related to the development and migration of meanders?

30. Where do natural levees form? How do they form?

31. Identify several floodplain landforms.

32. Why do deltas form at base level? What are the two main delta shapes?

33. What are distributaries? Where are they found? How do they form?

34. What is subsidence? Why do deltas experience it? Explain how deltas maintain an equilibrium between sedimentation and subsidence.

35. How do artificial levees disrupt the equilibrium between sedimentation and subsidence?

36. Why do floods happen? What two kinds of flooding are there?

37. What three major approaches are used to control floods? Explain how each works and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

38. How do dams provide water?

39. How do dams generate hydroelectricity?

40. Why do sediments settle out in reservoirs?

41. How do dams create habitat loss? Relate your answer to the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest.

42. How do dams relate to climate change?