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RIA
(REE-uh)
A
river valley drowned by a rise in sea level.
Common
clues: Creek; Fjord's kin; Coastline feature; Cove; Wedge-shaped
inlet; Narrow
inlet; Estuary; Drowned valley; River inlet; Its mouth is its
biggest part
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
4 times a year
Frequency
in English language:
59189 / 86800
A
ria is a submergent coastal landform, often known as a drowned
valley or drowned river valley. Rias are almost always estuaries.
Rias form when sea levels rise or plate tectonics cause coastal
levels to fall. When this happens valleys which were previously
at sea level become submerged. The result is often a very large
estuary at the mouth of a relatively insignificant river.
Port
Hacking, in the southern suburbs of Sydney (Australia) is a ria,
or drowned river valley. The deeply indented shape of the ria
reflects the dendritic pattern of drainage that existed before
the rise in sea level that flooded the valley.
The
south coast of England is a submergent coastline, and contains
many rias, including Portsmouth harbour, Southampton water, Poole
harbour; the estuaries of the Exe, Teign and Dart, the
Kingsbridge estuary, and Plymouth Sound in Devon; and the
estuaries of the River Fowey and River Fal in Cornwall.
Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay, on the east coast of the United
States, and San Francisco Bay, on the Pacific coast, are rias.
The
Kingsbridge estuary is an extreme example of a ria forming an
estuary disproportionate to the size of its river, because no
river flows into it at all, only a number of small streams.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Ria".
RIA
(210) 51 We- >1 07 Narr
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