Debouch

The port and city are the southern terminus of the Suez Canal which flows through Egypt and debouches into the Mediterranean Sea near Port Said.

In the geography of rivers, streams, and glaciers, a debouch, or debouche, is a place where runoff from a small, confined space emerges into a larger, broader space. The term is of French origin and means to cause to emerge. The term also has a military usage.

Geology

In fluvial geomorphology a debouch is a place where runoff from a small, confined space emerges into a larger, broader space. Common examples are when a stream runs into a river or when a river runs into an ocean. Debouching can generate mass amounts of sediment transport. When a narrow stream travels down a mountain pass into a basin, for example, an alluvial fan will form from the mass deposit of the sediment. The four largest rivers (the Amazon, the Ganges-Brahmaputra, the Yangtze and the Yellow) are responsible for 20% of the global discharge of sediment in to the oceans via debouches.

Geography

In fluvial geography, a debouch is a place where a body of water pours forth from a narrow opening. Some examples are: where a river or stream emerges from a narrow constraining landform, such as a defile, into open country or a wider space; a creek joins a river; or a stream flows into a lake.

Military

In military usage of debouch: as a noun, a fortification at the end of a defile is sometimes known as a debouch; and as a verb, soldiers emerging from a narrow space and spreading out are also said to "debouch."

See also

• Fluvial landforms of streams
• Region of freshwater influence

Further reading

• Ma, Yanxia(2009). Continental Shelf Sediment Transport and Depositional Processes on an Energetic, Active Margin: the Waiapu River Shelf, New Zealand. pp 2, 19
• Mitchell, Martha S. River Rules: The Nature of Streams. pp 5

External links

• The dictionary definition of debouch at Wiktionary
• Merriam-Webster. Debouch. 2012. October 10, 2012