How does a rivers source constantly have water.
In: 262
So basically, rivers are like the Energizer bunny of water. They just keep getting replenished! 💦🐰
The idea that a river has a “source” is kind of a poetic device. We identify the source of a river as the location furthest from the mouth of the river from which water permanently (or at least mostly) flows above ground. This is typically a spring of sorts, where water from underground streams rises to the surface due to various factors like terrain and pressure. So, already you can see that our idea of a source isn’t really accurate because it doesn’t account for the distance the water travels underground.
Secondly, we use very imprecise names for water bodies. What’s the difference between a river, a stream, a creek, and a brook? The answer is there is none, we just use these terms to indicate whether a body of water is a branch of a larger one; one stream might carry more water than a river elsewhere, but it’s still called a stream to indicate that it flows into a larger river. So, then, we end up in a situation where we’ve decided that *this* place is the source of a river, which means that *this* must be a river and not a stream, because reasons. By the time the river actually starts becoming large enough that most people would call it a river, it’s been fed by dozens of smaller branches, all contributing equally (if not more so) than the “source”.
In short, the idea of a river having a “source” is kind of meaningless. In fact, it has dozens of sources, all fed by a continuous cycle of water circulating. Some sources might travel many miles underground from melting glaciers or from wide swathes of land that receives plenty of precipitation, others might be fed from aquifers, and others maybe from lakes. It’s really a meaningless term that we just use to give rivers the longest possible length we can.
Well, actually, they can. Ex: Colorado River doesn’t have nearly the amount of snowmelt to keep it full with all of the communities taking from it.
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