To my understanding, a river’s source is fueled by snow and rain, but is it enough to keep it running for that long? Afterall the source doesn’t get rain/snow 24/7 so wouldn’t bigger rivers drain the source in a matter of weeks instead of many hundreds of years?
In: Planetary Science
Rivers vary – sometimes they have strong flow, sometimes weak, sometimes they dry up. Sometimes, they freeze in the winter. Sometimes the pieces of the river disconnect to form shallow ponds that will later reconnect when there’s more water. The strength of the flow and the width of the river is going to depend on how much water is flowing at the time.
Rivers aren’t that much higher than the bays or oceans they drain into. The river is fresh, but then there’s a brackish area that’s a mix of river water and salty ocean water.
When a river bed “dries up” it’s not just about draining all the water to the ocean. Some sinks into the ground. Some goes into smaller ponds.
Human interventions around the Nile river, the Mississippi river, and others use levees and flood walls so that people can live close to the river year round without getting flooded out when the river is having a particularly wet season.
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