A ravine is a

landform A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, ...

that is narrower than a

canyon A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

and is often the product of

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

bank

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

.Definition of "ravine"
at

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...

Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

s. Ravines may also be called a cleuch, dell, ghout ( Nevis), gill or ghyll,

glen A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower ...

gorge A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

, kloof (

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

), and chine (

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Isle of ...

) A ravine is generally a

fluvial In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluviog ...

slope landform of relatively steep (cross-sectional) sides, on the order of twenty to seventy percent in

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

. Ravines may or may not have active streams flowing along the downslope channel which originally formed them; moreover, often they are characterized by intermittent streams, since their geographic scale may not be sufficiently large to support a

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

watercourse A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams are ...

Notable ravines

* Babi Yar, Ukraine *

Bam Bam Amphitheaters The Bam Bam Amphitheaters are large erosional ravines found in Wonga-Wongue Presidential Reserve in western Gabon. Although they are referred to as "cirques," they are unrelated to the glacial cirques of high latitudes and mountains. In Gabon, the ...

, Gabon * Barranco de Badajoz, Spain * Barranco del Infierno, Spain * Gravina Ravine, Italy * Moola Chotok, Pakistan * Ravenna Park, United States * Rauðfeldsgjá, Iceland *

Stuðlagil Stuðlagil (; also transliterated as ''Studlagil'') is a ravine in in the municipality of Múlaþing, in the Eastern Region of Iceland. It is known for its columnar basalt rock formations and the blue-green water that runs through it. It became ...

, Iceland * Taishaku Valley, Japan * Toronto ravine system, Canada

References

External links

* * Erosion landforms Fluvial landforms Slope landforms Oronyms {{topography-stub