Functions and Uses of Rivers

Rivers form a natural network of waterways around the globe which carry water from high mountains to the oceans through plains. Since high mountains have pure water in form of ice which goes on melting to feed water to the rivers, the river waters are naturally pure. Thus, rivers are the sources of fresh potable water to humanity settled on the earth since prehistorical times. When humans decided to settle themselves forming houses in groups, their most natural choice had been to settle on river banks or easy accessibility of fresh water. This is still the primary function and use of rivers for humanity.

Water has a higher specific heat than the soil and rocks, thus needing more of heat for increasing its temperature than the soil and rocks. As a result, soils and rocks get hotter in summers and colder in winters than the water reservoirs and streams. Network of rivers on the land keeps on tempering sharpnesses of summers and winters on the land making it more comfortable to species of life on the earth.

Earth surface has a huge number of species of life including humans, animals, birds, insects, plants and vegetables etc. These keep on decaying and dying to give place to new generations. Thus a huge amount of organic matter keep on getting produced on the earth surface day and night. If all such decayed matter were to remain on the earth surface, we would have not found any free land for our existence. Since such decayed materials remain unbonded with the earth surface, these get washed away by rain waters and naturally taken to rivers and then taken to the oceans. Thus, the rivers keep on cleaning the earth surface regularly and it is their third function.

The above-said organic matters taken to the oceans gets decomposed further under pressures of ocean water and gets converted to petroleum on the ocean beds. Humans found it out and made good use of it as fuel to generate artificial energy. Thus, rivers have indirectly provided an invaluable fuel for humanity as their third function.

As human population grows, more of plain land is required for building houses and growing foods while the total land area seems to remain fixed. Over the time, mountain rocks decay and their peaks flatten creating free debris on the land. This debris is moved by the rivers from mountains to the oceans. On the other hand, river streams dig deep as water flow takes with it soil from the bottom and edges, thus gradually filling the oceans and adding to land area. Thus both ways, the land area on the globe increases slowly to accommodate the increasing population.

Humans, with the advent of modern civilization, also started producing a lot of inorganic matter in their industrial processes, a lot of which remains un-recyclable and is a waste for the humanity. This also, directly or indirectly, goes to the rivers and taken to the oceans. Thus, humans use rivers to clean the land of their waste products. But there is an over-use and misuse of this facility, the rivers provide. Over-use is in the sense that unlimited quantities of wastes are thrown into rivers, thus polluting their waters to the extent of making these unfit for human consumption and choking their passages. The misuse of the facility is being made by throwing toxic materials into the rivers, thus killing species of life in the river streams and disturbing the ecological balance of the earth.


Thus, we see that the rivers have many natural functions to support life on the earth surface. As if these are not considered enough, the humans are trying to derive more of benefits from these through overuses and misuses and spoiling the game of Nature, about which we must restrain ourselves.