Flooding

Question 1

Explain what causes a river to flood

Answer 1

A river will flood when water flows into the channel faster than it can be carried downstream. It will overflow its banks and spread out on to the surrounding floodplains.

Question 2

What are the causes of flooding? 2 Human factors

Answer 2

Human factors:
Deforestation (no more leaves to intercept the rain or roots to soak up the water etc)
Urbanisation (building cities;rain can not infiltrate through the tarmac

Physical 
Heavy Rain
Steep slopes
Impermable rock
saturated soil
many tributaties

Question 3

Flood management - describe hard engineering and soft engineering managemnet

Answer 3

Hard engineering - dam, embankments, river straigtening, flood relief chanels
Soft engineering - flood warnings, flood plain zoning, aforstation

Question 4

what is hard engineering and soft engineering

Answer 4

Hard - using artificial materials to alter the national flow of the river
Soft - natural measures to reduce flood risk - eg afforestation