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Great Rivers of the World
for social studies and science educators, and home schoolers.
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landforms > RIVERS LIST < social studies
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Rivers are narrow bodies of fresh water that follow a path and erode away the land they flow over creating land forms such as deltas, canyons and valleys.
Rivers were the first great pathways of humanity and we can study civilizations by exploring waterways today.
Stream is the scientific term for any naturally flowing waterway. River refers to a very large stream. Streams always flow downhill. Its source can be a spring, lake, or gathering of many smaller streams; the flow ends in an ocean or sea, at its delta. Rivers can meander over relatively flat land or descend in rapids & waterfalls when the elevation changes quickly. The area a stream collects water from is called its watershed.
FYI - did you know the word ‘Hindu’ evolved from an Old Persian geography term for the people who lived beyond the Sindhu, know today as the Indus River?
• “When the river is deepest it makes least noise.” ~ Proverb
• “Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.” ~ Francis Bacon
• “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” ~ Wendell Berry
• “It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry
• “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” ~ Wendell Berry
• “We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations.” ~ David Brower
• “The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass.” ~ Marjory Stoneman Douglas
• “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” ~ Khalil Gibran
• “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” ~ Heraclitus
• “He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” ~ Horace
• “Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.” ~ Cordell Hull
• “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can't Swim’.” ~ Lyndon Baines Johnson
• “May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
• “Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?” ~ Blaise Pascal
• “How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• “Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.” ~ Jose Saramago
• “It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.” ~ Thornton Wilder
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Hydrosphere: Water Environments
Poster Text: Water is stored in the hydroshpeher in areas called resovoirs. These reservoirs include the atmosphere, oceans, lakes, rivers, soils, glaciers, snowfields, and groundwater. Water is essential for life, and many of these reservoirs provide water environments for living organisms. Wetlands, coral reefs and open oceans are examples of biomes in which water plays a major role. The tropical rainforest biome, which supports the majority of the Earth's biodiversity, dependes on rainfall to sustain its abundant life.
There are many types of watery environments. These range from freshwater ponds to salty seas, whcih contain three times the salt concentration of the ocean.
The largest water environemnt on Earth is the ocean. Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and are responsible for producing about half of the world's biomass (the weight of all plants, animals, fungi, and microbes in the biosphere). Most organisms in the oceans live at the sunlit ocean surface. Below 25 meters there is little light to support photosynthesis for plants, which are the building blocks for the rest of the food chain.
Wetland habitats support an immense diveristy of life, from tiny microscopic organisms to reptiles, to large mammals. By definition, wetlands are lands on which water covers the soil or is present either at or near the surface of the soil. In coastal wetlands and estuaries, the salt water and tides combine to create an environment in which only salt-tolerant species (halophytes) can survive. Inland wetlands include food plants along rivers and streams. Marshes and wet meadows are dominated by grasses and other non-woody plants or shrubs, while swamps are dominated by trees.
• more ecosphere posters
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