Water School

The term riparian area refers to the bank of a river. Riparian areas have one or both of the following characteristics: 1) distinctively different vegetative species than adjacent areas, and 2) species similar to adjacent areas but exhibiting more vigorous or robust growth forms. Riparian areas are usually transitional between wetland and upland.

A 500-year flood is a high streamflow that overflows the natural or artificial banks of a waterway and has a two-tenths of 1% chance of occurring in any given year.

The height above mean sea level that water in a reservoir has reached. Brazos River Authority and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lakes are actually reservoirs, or parts of the Brazos River basin impounded by dams. (A free-flowing river is measured in stages, that is, by depth from the river bed to the surface.)

A river's bank is the sloping ground that borders the watercourse and confines the water in the natural channel when the water level, or flow, is normal.

A tributary is a small river or stream that merges or flows into a larger river or stream. A river typically has several tributaries.Numerous tributaries feed into the Brazos River including the Clear, Salt and Double Mountain forks of the Brazos as well as the Navasota, Bosque, Nolan, and Little rivers and Yegua Creek. In addition, those tributaries each have several sub-tributaries, including numerous creeks as well as the Leon and San Gabriel Rivers, among others.

An oxbow is a severe bend in a river channel creating a “U” shape and leaving a very narrow strip of land between the two bends.  Many times, erosion will wear through this narrow strip and the course of the river changes leaving a “U” shaped or oxbow lake or a dry riverbed.