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What is flooding?
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Flooding is a natural and inevitable process. Floods occur when a river's channel cannot hold all the water supplied to it by its watershed (the area the river drains). When a river floods in the lower part of a watershed, the water spill out onto a floodplain, which is a flat area immediately adjacent to the river channel that has been built by river (fluvial) processes. Flat areas that lie above the floodplain are called terraces and often reflect some past climate conditions (such as the last ice age when there may have been more rainfall and more river flow.) |
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Learn more about flooding, earthquakes, and geology at Geology Labs On-line, interactive science courseware created by Gary Novak at the California State University at Los Angeles. |
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