﻿Hi, everyone, it's Mr. Burton. I'm really excited to be teaching the next lesson in this rivers unit. We are going to be looking at some of the key features of drainage basins. Some of you may live very near a river and be familiar with these already. Some of you may not be, in which case it's really exciting because you're going to learn lots and lots. So what you need as ever is an exercise book or a piece of paper, pens and pencils and some basic stationery. A computer is good. If you're working on computer, that's fine. So I would urge you now to pause the video whilst you go and get those things, and once you have done that and you're somewhere quiet and focused, we will begin. Hi, everyone, it's Mr. Burton. Today we are going to be looking at the key features of a drainage basin. I would pause here until you've got the equipment that you need, so pen, pencil, piece of paper, and exercise book. And when you're ready to continue, press play. In today's lesson, we are going to look at how rivers flows within an area. Rivers usually drain a large area of land, and this is known as a drainage basin, as I've defined on the screen. You can see in the figure on the right the yellow shaded area, which is the drainage basin of the Amazon River in Brazil, South America. You can think of it as a large area of land which funnels water into one main channel or river and ultimately into a lake or the sea. So what I'd like you to do first of all is to use the map of a figure that we've previously talked about on the right-hand side of the drainage basin. Remember, it's showing the drainage basin of the Amazon River. I would like you to describe the drainage basin that you can see. So give me some basic physical characteristics of it. So where is it, in which continent, in which country? How big is it? What is its shape? Pause the video now to have a go at this task. Okay, so here are some of the things that you could have said. I'm going to give you a few seconds just so you can read from the slide. You may have said other things. That's fine also. You will notice that I've ticked correct references to countries and the continent name, so South America. If you described its spatial extent using a compass direction, that is also worthy of a tick. You should see a picture of a hillside on the right-hand side. This figure is showing you a drainage basin. There are five different features that you need to know about, and I'm going to introduce you to them one by one. So the source, which is marked on the diagram in the mountainous area on the right-hand side, is the start of a river. So this is often found in an upland or mountainous area. And a river usually begins as a very small stream. Next, we have the channel, which is just where a river flows. A tributary is a smaller river which joins a larger one. Note, only one of the small tributaries is actually marked on the diagram, but there are many others as well that could've been labelled. Okay, next we have the confluence or a confluence. This is the point at which two or more rivers meet. Again, only one confluence is marked on the diagram, but there are others that you should spot that you could've been labelled as well. Then we have the watershed. This is the dividing line between two drainage basins. So a watershed simply sheds the water from two drainage basins. If rain falls on the other side of a watershed, the water will flow into a different drainage basin and ultimately into a different river. Finally, we have the mouth. This is where the river enters the sea or another body of water, such as a lake. Now I'm going to give you a series of photographs now of some of these key features, and its your job to try and identify the features that I'm showing you in these photographs. So this is photograph number one, and I'm going to give you a couple of seconds to identify it. Okay, so you should notice that this photograph is showing you the source of a river. We can tell that because it's quite a small stream at this point, and it's quite clearly in an upland or mountainous area. Okay, again I'm going to give you a few seconds to have a look at this photograph. Try and work out which feature of which a drainage basin that's being shown. It is of course a tributary. You can see that it's just a smaller river joining the main one, so it's an example of a tributary. Again, I'm going to give you a few seconds to have a look at this photograph. What's the drainage basin feature that I'm showing you? It is of course a confluence. This is the point at which two or more rivers meet. Finally, what drainage basin feature am I showing you in this photograph? Three, two, one. This of course is the river mouth. You can quite clearly see the river flowing into the sea. Well done if you got all of those correct. Okay, so as a quick check, what I would like you to do is to match the drainage basin feature with the correct description. So write the numbers one to five in the margin, and write down the letter you think they match with. For example, if you think 1 matches with C, you write 1C. So this should take you a couple of minutes. Pause the video now to have a go at this task, please. Okay, so here are the answers. I'm going to let you mark your own. Please tick the statements which are fully correct. Check that you've got them 100% accurate and complete. I'm going to give you a few seconds now to do that. When you are ready, you can unpause and move on. So now we're going to practise looking at these drainage basin features using an aerial photograph. So this is an aerial photograph taken of the Amazon River, which is the river I showed you at the very beginning of this lesson. It's the largest river in the world by volume. It carries a lot of water, 209,000 cubic metres per second. It's also the largest drainage basin in the world, so really good example to look at today. I'm going to show you what features you should be able to spot here. Before I do, I'm going to give you 10 seconds now to quickly write down the key drainage basin features which you think you can spot in this image. So 10 seconds. Off you go. So I'm going to bring up some labels which show you theoretically what you should've spotted. So the blue line is the main river channel. Hopefully you all spotted that. Then we have lots of small tributaries which are feeding into it. I have labelled just one of these for you, but there are many others. You can also see a confluence here. Again, there are other examples in this photograph. Remember, a confluence is where two rivers or more meet. Lastly, we have the mouth, which is where the river meets the sea, in this case the Atlantic Ocean. We're now going to look at an OS or Ordnance Survey map, you've probably seen a map like this before in geography, to try and spot some of our drainage basin features. We are in the very north of England, in Northumberland, just two miles south of the Scottish border. You will see that the River Tweed is flowing eastwards out into the North Sea. The settlement Berwick-upon-Tweed is located on this river, and this links back to when we looked at why rivers are important. Many settlements were originally built to be near to rivers. I'm going to show you all the different drainage basin features you should be able to spot using an OS map like this. Pay attention because you're going to have to do this for a different map in a minute. The first feature which is easy to spot is the river channel itself. I have labelled this for you. We also have a tributary, which is a smaller river joining the main river. There are others I could have labelled also. Here is a confluence. This is where two rivers meet. Finally, you can spot the mouth where the River Tweed enters the North Sea. So now I want you to do a very similar thing, but with a different map. We are near the village of Dunbeath in the very northeast of Scotland. Write down the drainage basin features you can spot. As a challenge, could you write down their four-figure and six-figure grid references? Pause here to complete this task. Okay, here are the features I think you should've spotted. I'm going to show you where they are. So they are labelled there for you. Okay, that brings us to your final main task for today, and you've got two small tasks I'd like you to do. Firstly, I'd like you to draw your own diagram of a drainage basin. Use a pencil, and make this at least half a page so it's nice and clear. Below your diagram, explain in full sentences what each of these drainage basin features is. I have put the five I would like you to explain in the box. This task, I think, should take you about 15 minutes. Good luck. In this lesson today, we have learnt about some of the key features of a drainage basin, and we've begun to look at drainage basins on OS maps and from aerial photographs. Your job now is to complete the quiz to help consolidate your learning. In the next lesson, we are going to be learning about how water moves within a particular drainage basin.

In this lesson we will be learning about the drainage basin of a river and some of their key features. We will look at aerial photographs and OS map extracts to try and spot the main features.

A drainage basin is an area of land drained by a river and its tributaries.

Drainage basins include features such as a source, tributaries, confluences, mouth, watershed.

The Mississippi drainage basin is the largest in N. America totalling 41% of the United States and is the 4th largest in the world.

Geography

Y8 Geography

Key Stage 3

Year 8

What are the features of a drainage basin?

Rivers

UNIT

Why are rivers important?

How does the river drainage basin system work?

What are the features of a river's long profile?

Erosion and transportation

How do waterfalls form?

What are the processes operating across meanders?

What are floodplains and how do they form?

What are the causes of flooding within drainage basins?

How can we manage the flood risk?

An example of a flood event in the UK

How can we respond to flood events?

An example of a flood event in a developing country

Bangladesh is located in which continent?

A waterborne disease is a disease which...

How many people had to live in temporary shelters after the 2007 Bangladesh floods?

What is a conservationist?

What is meant by 'afforestation'?

Which of the below is an example of a long-term response to the 2007 Tewkesbury floods?

Urbanisation increased what kind of surfaces?

A physical cause of flooding is...

If the ground is saturated, this means that...

Deforestation will mean that the amount of precipitation trapped by interception...

Floodplains and levees are typically found in the...

A floodplain is very fertile because...

A levee is...

A meander is a...

The following question is about meanders

At the outside of the bend, the river velocity is...

The pool at the bottom of a waterfall is known as a...

A waterfall is typically found in the...

A river deposits its load when the energy of the river...

Precipitation is...

The trapping of water by the leaves of trees is known as...

Cutting down trees would do what to the amount of water stored in the interception store?

The River Ganges is located in...

What does the word 'irrigation' mean?

The following question is about river flood/ erosion defences

Hard engineering is...

A body of water created behind a dam is known as a...

Which of these land uses is typically not allowed to be located near to the river on a floodplain if floodplain zoning is being used?

What do we call the start of a river?

A confluence is...

As rocks are eroded, they become smaller, rounded and smooth. True or false?

The dragging of large boulders along the river bed is known as...

Lesson overview:What are the features of a drainage basin?

Core Content

Pupils Will Learn

Rivers: