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Rivers
Landforms are features created by nature. Rivers are bodies of moving water that can create landforms. Rivers are landforms themselves. Tributaries are landforms caused by a river or stream feeding into a larger river. Rivers eventually enter a lake or sea. The "mouth of the river" is the point where this occurs.
Deltas
The river sometimes has sediment that forms a triangular plain at the mouth of the river, called the "delta." This occurs when sediment deposits faster than the sea can remove it.
V-Shaped Valleys
Rivers erode land over time, creating canyons. These rivers are called "alluvial rivers." Rivers create different valley types. Upper-course rivers create steep-sided v-shaped valleys and often have interlocking spurs, rapids and waterfalls. When a river falls steeply from hard rock, the water forms a waterfall. Waterfalls appear as a result of the river eroding the rocks unpredictably. Faults in the Earth's crust and glaciers also cause waterfalls. Interlocking spurs are land ridges that jut out into the water in alternating ways. Rapids are very turbulent stretches of water caused by resistance placed on the water by various rocks.
Shallower Valleys
Middle-course rivers create wider and shallower valleys, which might have meanders (bends of the river) and oxbow lakes, which are lakes shaped in crescents and are found along winding rivers. Lower-course rivers create flat-bottomed valleys. These areas might have floodplains and deltas. Floodplains are areas that are next to rivers and can flood in the "floodway," which is the area that fills up with moving water, which is more dangerous than the flood fringe. The flood fringe instead fills with standing water.
Rivers can create back swamps near the river, caused by floods carrying fine material to the location of the eventual swamp. This material holds water and drains slowly, leading to new swamp habitats.
Levees
Sometimes, the sediment that deposits at the side of the river channel will create natural levees, which can prevent flooding. Also, the bank deposits on the river are major sources of nutrients. The natural levees are sometimes not high enough to protect against serious floods, so people still build artificial levees, usually.