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When good rivers turn bad: Extreme flooding
Streams and mass wasting

Mass-wasting

Mass-wasting is the down-slope movement of Regolith (loose uncemented mixture of soil and rock particles that covers the Earth's surface) by the force of gravity without the aid of a transporting medium such as water, ice, or wind. Still, as we shall see, water plays a key role. Mass-wasting is part of a continuum of erosional processes between weathering and stream transport. Mass-wasting causes regolith to move down-slope where sooner or later the loose particles will be picked up by another transporting agent and eventually moved to a site of deposition such as an ocean basin or lake bed. In order for regolith to move in a mass wasting process it must be on a slope, since gravity will only cause motion if the material is on a slope.

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1. Origins of extreme weather | 2. Finding hidden treasure | 3. Streams and mass wasting
4. The Johnstone River, FNQ


The resources contained in this unit are courtesy of Earth Science Australia http://earthsci.org/