river delta
Sign in to savelandform that is formed at the mouth of a river
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A river delta is a landform that develops where a river flows into a larger body of water, like an ocean or lake. Deltas are important because they create fertile areas that support agriculture, wildlife, and human settlements, while also serving as natural buffers against storms and flooding.
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A satellite perspective of the river delta of the Lena river, Russia. A satellite perspective of the Amazon Delta, in South America. NASA satellite perspective, in false color, the River Nile Delta.
A river delta is a landform, typically triangular, created by the deposition of the sediments that are carried by the waters of a river, where the river merges with a body of slow-moving water or with a body of stagnant water. The creation of a river delta occurs at the river mouth, where the river merges into an ocean, a sea, or an estuary, into a lake, a reservoir, or (more rarely) into another river that cannot carry away the sediment supplied by the feeding river. Etymologically, the term river delta derives from the triangular shape (Δ) of the uppercase Greek letter delta. In hydrology, the dimensions of a river delta are determined by the balance between the watershed processes that supply sediment and the watershed processes that redistribute, sequester, and export the supplied sediment into the receiving basin.