In Europe and Central Asia, China, the United States and even tropical countries, you can find ravines that people attribute to their natural enemies. They harm agricultural activities, lead to soil erosion. We offer you to find out what a ravine is, for what reasons it appears and how it differs from a beam.
Overall value
The ravine is a special form of relief - a deep hollow formed under the influence of water flows. Most often, they appear on the elevations of plains formed from easily eroded rocks. In the dictionary, K. D. Ushakov is synonymous with a pothole, in Ozhegov - a hollow.
We distinguish the following characteristics of ravines:
- The length can be from several meters to kilometers.
- Most often they have steep slopes.
- Formed in areas with a continental climate due to melting snow, when deforestation on the slopes.
Next, consider what a ravine and beam. Firstly, these are landforms. But if the slopes of the ravine are steep, then they are gentle at the beam. Secondly, ravines are often formed on the slopes of beams. Thirdly, the beams have sodded slopes, ravines - no. And one more difference: the beam is a dry valley with a flat bottom, very often does not have a pronounced channel, sometimes it represents the final stage of the ravine, but sometimes it forms by itself.
Kinds
We continue to consider what a ravine is. Another definition can be formulated as follows: this is damage to the soil that occurred as a result of the effects of temporary water flows resulting from atmospheric phenomena, primarily rain showers. It is customary to distinguish several types of ravines:
- Bottom and coastal. In the first case, the bottom of the relief is eroded, in the second, its side slopes.
- Acting, fading, filled up. The former continue to erode, the latter are already fully formed, are not subject to more destructive processes. Still others as a result of human activity were destroyed - they were covered with soil.
- Finally, based on the features of appearance, it is possible to distinguish between trunk (simple), branched and tree-shaped ravines. The latter have the largest area and complex appearance: several branches extend from one trunk.
- According to the shape, gullies can be classified into club-shaped, clear-shaped, diamond-shaped and ovoid.
There are a lot of similar distinctions; each classification was invented for specific purposes.
Harm
Having examined what a ravine is, we find out how much harm it brings to people. First of all, ravines destroy fields, making it difficult to engage in crop production. Small hollows divide the field, which interferes with its processing. In addition, they lead to soil erosion, and also because of them there is a decrease in the level of groundwater, which causes the territory to dry out. The growth of ravines can be dangerous for transmission lines, roads, highways.
Protection
We saw that the ravines are of no use. That is why people are fighting these negative, even harmful forms of relief:
- Trees are planted that will impede their formation.
- They make dams and drainage channels.
The main direction of the fight against the appearance of ravines is to regulate the flow of rain and melt water; for this purpose, certain agricultural and hydraulic measures are being introduced. The latter include:
- Retention of runoff on a strip with ditches and shafts.
- Construction of structures to strengthen the peaks and slopes of the ravine. Among these buildings are the console trays, swings, fast currents.
- Water discharge to the bottom of the ravine without erosion of the channel. For this, upland channels are made.
All this allows to reduce the rate of development of ravines, to reduce the harm they cause.
We examined what a ravine is (the definition of this concept is presented at the beginning of the article), the features of this landform, its harmful effects and the control measures that people use.