real property law Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual prop ...

, avulsion refers to a sudden loss of land, which results from the action of water. It differs from accretion, which describes a gradual addition to land resulting from the action of water.

Avulsion and riparian owners

The distinction between avulsion and accretion becomes important if a river forms the boundary between two

riparian A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks a ...

owners. In many jurisdictions, if the river changes channels by avulsion, the boundary does not change but remains in the middle of the old channel. For example, the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

forms the boundary between several U.S. states, and the principle causes states on the lower Mississippi to have occasional pieces of land on the opposite side from the rest of the state. The river changed course quickly in such locations and so the boundaries did not change.) However, as a river gradually changes through accretion, the boundary changes with it. To prove that a change was avulsion and not accretion, it is sufficient, at least under

Oklahoma law Oklahoma law is the state law of Oklahoma. Oklahoma law is based on the Oklahoma Constitution (the state constitution), which defines how the statutes must be passed into law, and defines the limits of authority and basic law that the Oklahoma ...

, for the owner of land that was washed away to point out approximately as much land added to the opposite bank as washed away from his bank.

Avulsion and littoral owners

Avulsion can also affect

littoral The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal a ...

owners through events like hurricanes that can rapidly erode a shoreline.''Walton County v. Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc.'' 998 So. 2d 1102 (2008) Florida courts have determined that littoral owners have the right to all the land that they had previous to the avulsive event.

References

{{reflist Real property law Common law Common law legal systems