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Previous (Strawberry)
Next (Stream of consciousness) Butchers Creek in Omeo, Victoria.

A stream, brook, beck, burn, creek, crick, kill, rill, syke, bayou, rivulet, or run is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. The biological habitat in the immediate vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone.

In the scientific community, stream is also an umbrella term for all types of flowing natural waters, regardless of size. The study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core part of environmental geography.

Streams are important as conduits in the water cycle, instruments in aquifer recharge, and corridors for fish and wildlife migration. By connecting fragmented habitats, they help conserve biodiversity.

Alternative names for a stream

In North America:

Types of streams A creek in Australia. Yellow River in rural Indiana, USA. Rivers of this size are often referred to as "creeks."

A large natural stream, which may be a waterway.
Creek (North America and Australia)
A small to medium sized natural stream. Sometimes navigable by motor craft and may be intermittent. In some dialects it is pronounced: "crick."
Creek (UK and India)
A tidal inlet, typically in a saltmarsh or mangrove swamp. Alternatively, flowing water between enclosed and drained, former saltmarshes or swamps. In these cases, the stream is the tidal stream, the course of the seawater through the creek channel at low and high tide.
A contributory stream, or a stream that does not reach the sea but joins another river (a parent river). Sometimes also called a branch or fork.
A stream smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep. It is usually small and easily forded. A brook is characterized by its shallowness and its bed being composed solely of rocks.
In some regions, it is equivalent to "creek"; in other regions, it may be smaller than a creek or deeper than a creek of the same width. A rocky stream in Hawaii. A brook in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. Ambro torrent, Italy.

Parts of a stream

Sources of stream water

Characteristics of streams Tämnarån, Sweden.

Streams in geographic terms are awarded order designations. A stream of the first order is a blue-line stream which does not have any other blue-line stream feeding into it. A stream of the second order is one which is formed by the joining of two or more blue-line streams. A third-order stream is one below the confluence of two or more second-order streams; a fourth-order stream is formed by the confluence of at least two third-order streams, and so forth.
The gradient of a stream is a critical factor in determining its character, and is entirely determined by its base level of erosion. The base level of erosion is the point at which the stream either enters the ocean, a lake or pond, or enters a stretch in which it has a much lower gradient, and may be specifically applied to any particular stretch of a stream.
In geologic terms, the stream will erode down through its bed to achieve the base level of erosion throughout its course. If this base level is low, then the stream will rapidly cut through underlying strata and have a steep gradient, and if the base level is relatively high, then the stream will form a flood plain and meanders. Stream in North Bay, Canada

Meanders are looping changes of direction of a stream caused by the erosion and deposition of bank materials. These may be somewhat sine-wave in form. Typically, over time, the meanders don't disappear but gradually migrate downstream.
If some resistant material slows or stops the downstream movement of a meander, a stream may erode through the neck between two legs of a meander to become temporarily straighter, leaving behind an arc-shaped body of water termed an oxbow lake or bayou. A flood may also result in a meander being cut through in this way.
Typically, streams are said to have a particular profile, beginning with steep gradients, no flood plain, and little shifting of channels, eventually evolving into streams with low gradients, wide flood plains, and extensive meanders. The initial stage is sometimes termed a "young" or "immature" stream, and the later state a "mature" or "old" stream. However, a stream may meander for some distance before falling into a "young" stream condition.

Intermittent and ephemeral streams 

In the United States, an intermittent stream is one that only flows for part of the year and is marked on topographic maps with a line of blue dashes and dots. A wash or desert wash is normally a dry streambed in the deserts of the American Southwest which flows only after significant rainfall. Washes can fill up quickly during rains, and there may be a sudden torrent of water after a thunderstorm begins upstream, such as during monsoonal conditions. These flash floods often catch travelers by surprise. An intermittent stream can also be called an arroyo in Latin America, or a wadi in the Arabic-speaking world.

In Italy an intermittent stream is termed a torrent Template:In it. In full flood the stream may or may not be "torrential" in the dramatic sense of the word, but there will be one or more seasons in which the flow is reduced to a trickle or less. Typically torrents have Appenine rather than Alpine sources, and in the summer are fed by little precipitation and no melting snow. In this case the maximum discharge will be during the spring and autumn. However there are also glacial torrents with a different seasonal regime.

A blue-line stream is one which flows for most or all of the year and is marked on topographic maps with a solid blue line. In Australia, an intermittent stream is usually called a creek, and marked on topographic maps with a solid blue line.

Drainage basins

The entire basin drained by the stream is termed the drainage basin, also known in North America as a "watershed,"[1] and in British English as a "catchment."

A basin will typically be composed of smaller basins. For instance, the Continental Divide in North America divides the Atlantic Ocean basin from the Pacific Ocean basin, but the Atlantic Ocean basin may be first divided into the Atlantic Ocean drainage and the Gulf of Mexico drainage. This delineation within the United States is termed the Eastern Continental Divide. The Gulf of Mexico basin may be divided into Mississippi River basin and a number of smaller basins, such as the Tombigbee River basin.

The Mississippi River basin includes the Ohio River basin, which in turn includes the Kentucky River basin, and so forth.





All links retrieved October 22, 2015.

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