A ria (/ˈrə/;[1] Galician: ría, feminine noun derived from río, river) is a coastal inlet formed by the partial submergence of an unglaciated river valley. It is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea.

Port Jackson, also referred to as Sydney Harbour, 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.

Definitions

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Typically rias have a dendritic, treelike outline although they can be straight and without significant branches. This pattern is inherited from the dendritic drainage pattern of the flooded river valley. The drowning of river valleys along a stretch of coast and formation of rias results in an extremely irregular and indented coastline. Often, there are naturally occurring islands, which are summits of partly submerged, pre-existing hill peaks. (Islands may also be artificial, such as those constructed for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.)

A ria coast is a coastline having several parallel rias separated by prominent ridges, extending a distance inland.[2][3][4] The sea level change that caused the submergence of a river valley may be either eustatic (where global sea levels rise), or isostatic (where the local land sinks). The result is often a very large estuary at the mouth of a relatively insignificant river (or else sediments would quickly fill the ria). The Kingsbridge Estuary in Devon, England, is an extreme example of a ria forming an estuary disproportionate to the size of its river; no significant river flows into it at all, only a number of small streams.[4]

The word ria comes from Galician ría which comes from río (river). Rias are present all along the Galician coast in Spain. As originally defined, the term was restricted to drowned river valleys cut parallel to the structure of the country rock that was at right angles to the coastline. However the definition of ria was later expanded to other flooded river valleys regardless of the structure of the country rock.[citation needed]

For a time European geomorphologists[5] considered rias to include any broad estuarine river mouth, including fjords. These are long narrow inlets with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity. In the 21st century, however, the preferred usage of ria by geologists and geomorphologists is to refer solely to drowned unglaciated river valleys. It therefore excludes fjords by definition, since fjords are products of glaciation.[2][3][4]

Locations

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Europe

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A satellite view of Galicia
 
Ria of San Vicente de la Barquera in Cantabria, Spain
 
Ria of Rijeka Dubrovačka in Dubrovnik, Croatia
 
Ria of Bay of Kotor in Kotor, Montenegro

Africa

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Asia

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Musandam Peninsula on the Strait of Hormuz

Oceania

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Tory Channel, in New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds

North America

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South America

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Consequences

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The funnel-like shape of rias can amplify the effects of tsunamis, as demonstrated in the seismicity of the Sanriku coast, most recently in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "ria". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ^ a b Cotton, C.A. (1956). "Rias Sensu Stricto and Sensu Lato". The Geographical Journal. 122 (3): 360–364. doi:10.2307/1791018. JSTOR 1791018.
  3. ^ a b Goudie, A. (2004) Encyclopedia of Geomorphology. Routledge. London, England.
  4. ^ a b c Bird, E.C.F. (2008) Coastal Geomorphology: An Introduction, 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. West Sussex, England.
  5. ^ Gulliver, F.P. (1899). "Shoreline Topography". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 34 (8): 151–258. doi:10.2307/20020880. JSTOR 20020880.
  6. ^ Michael J. Kennish; Hans W. Paerl (15 June 2010). Coastal Lagoons: Critical Habitats of Environmental Change. CRC Press. pp. 361–. ISBN 978-1-4200-8831-1.

Further reading

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  • Perillo, Gerardo, Geomorphology and Sedimentology of Estuaries, Volume 53. pp. 17–47. Elsevier Science (1995) ISBN 9780080532493
  • von Richthofen, F. Fuhrer fur Forschungsreisende ("Guide for Explorers"), pp. 308–310. Berlin, Oppenheim (1886)