Humid Mophological Systems

A Humid MS is a warm area where the main geological agent is water.

Water acts in three different ways:

• Torrent: Consolidated channels but water doesn´t run permanently. It has serveral parts:

• Catchment basin: Receives the rainfall water. The watershed makes everything go through the same canal.
• Drain: It presents different landforms:
• Pools or giant´s kettle: Areas where the water erosions creating this holes. The lower pressure makes the water move the little stone inside the pool making it deeper.

• Rafts: They are formed when there´s a bigger slope and the water has more energy thanks to this height difference.

• Waterfalls: water falling from an important height, formed when a river or stream flows over a precipice

• Alluvial fan: cone-shaped deposit where the water puts down the sediments when it loses its energy.

• Wild water: Watercourses but without a permanent basin. It produces different geological effects:

• Gullies: Waterfalls everywhere digging furrows on the slopes or badlands.

• Fairy chimneys are also formed here (badlands).

• Limestone pavement: Grooves formed on the rocks (limestone) by dissolution.

• Rivers: Permanent basin and continuous water flow. 

          Some important considerations are:

• Balance profile.  Rivers tend to have as much erosion as sedimentation all along their basin. They rarely get this balance profile because of the tectonic movements.

• Rivers erode backwards. Water removes material from the top of the river.

• Landforms:

• Waterfalls
• Bends: Curve structures of the rivers. They are formed by the collision of the water against a wall which starts eroding. Near internal wall, where the water has less energy there is sedimentation. That´s why the curves get bigger every time (middle course).

• Floodplains: When there is an inundation, the water leaves sediments on both sides of the river.