Week 3 - The Nile River

Source Link: http://www.crystalinks.com/egypthistory.html

Last week, my sister and I were winners of Wheel of Fortune and won a cruising trip on the Nile River which is located in Africa. From the Mediterranean Sea, our boat entered the Nile River delta. Since, it's hard to see exactly where we were, I had a map to look at. With an overview, I could see that the delta had a semi-dendritic pattern."Isn't it cool how deltas are formed, Kat?" I asked my sister. "Although deltas are formed by the amount of sediment that builds up, you really can't see the formation of one since it takes a long time to actually develop," she replied. "Which also goes to show how long the Nile River (and its sub-rivers) have existed" I said. We both wondered why the Nile River branched into two rivers: the White Nile and Blue Nile. After further research, I shared that the Blue Nile and White Nile were given specific and purposeful names. The White Nile tributary was named because it carried light-grey sediment which gave it the white-grayish color. Similarly, the Blue Nile carries black sediment that give the water a dark-blue color. My sister who was thinking about a flood that happened in our hometown a while back was wondering about floods that occurred here and if there were ways to prevent floods. Remembering reading in a geology book, I told her, "There are different types of floods: regional floods, flash floods, and ice-jam floods. Here in the Nile River, regional floods would occur since floods were seasonal. Egyptians called this time "akhet."  There necessarily aren't ways to prevent floods since they are natural disasters. Instead, there are ways to control the floods. These include creating artificial levees, channelizing river channels to make water flow efficient, and building dams. I believe there is a dam built here in the Nile River, but building dams are expensive and are only temporary solutions to flood control. The last way floods could be controlled would be having zoning regulations. That is, deciding whether there can be residence in these floodplains or not." My sister fell silent, but the smile that I saw her sneak gave me the impression that she would one day want to help engineers think of a solution to controlling floods effectively and efficiently.