Rivers Unit
9 modules covering where the rain goes. the drainage basin system, the processes that shape a river, its landforms from source to sea, and how people live with rivers โ built for the 2027 cambridge igcse syllabus
Your route through the unit.
Start anywhere โ M1 is the gentlest way in.Module 1
The Water Cycle & Drainage Basins
Where does the rain go? The drainage basin as an open system inside the closed global water cycle โ and the one decision every drop makes when it lands, which decides how fast the river responds.
Module 2
River Processes
A river breaks rock, carries it, and drops it. Erosion, transportation and deposition are not three topics โ they are three answers to one question: does the river have enough energy for this particle?
Module 3
The Long Profile & the Bradshaw Model
The slope gets gentler all the way to the sea โ so why does the river get faster? Six things you can measure in a channel, one you can only calculate, and an idealised model of what changes downstream.
Module 4
Upper Course Landforms
Six landforms, one contest: the riverโs cutting energy against the resistance of the rock. It is WHERE the resistant rock sits โ the geometry โ that decides which one you get.
Module 5
Meanders & Ox-bow Lakes
The middle course, where the river starts to swing. Why the fastest water drifts from bank to bank, how a river cliff and a slip-off slope grow as a pair, and how a bend migrates until the river cuts it off as an ox-bow lake.
Module 6
Landforms of the Lower Course
The river has almost no slope left to fall down โ so how does it build the biggest landforms on its whole journey? One sorting rule, applied three times: floodplains, levรฉes and deltas.
Module 7
Living with Rivers โ Opportunities & Hazards
Millions of people choose to live beside rivers that flood โ why do they stay? Opportunity and hazard are not two lists: they are the same process seen from two sides, and the balance does not fall the same way for everybody.
Module 8
River Flooding: the Klang, December 2021
Why do rivers flood, and how can people reduce the harm that floods do? In December 2021 record rain and a very high tide met on the Klang in Malaysia. The SMART Tunnel protected central Kuala Lumpur for a record 22 hours, yet Taman Sri Muda downstream flooded about 4 m deep. The depth study for the 2027 syllabus.
Module 9
River Pollution: the Klang and the River of Life
Why did the Klang become polluted, what does pollution do to a river, and has the River of Life clean-up worked? In Kuala Lumpur most of the pollution is sewage, and the cityโs drains carry the rest. The depth study for the 2027 syllabus, and the last module of the unit.