query: mouth_of_the_watercourse distributary
supports: Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand and silt can be carried in suspension in river water and on reaching the sea be deposited by sedimentation and if buried this may eventually become sandstone and siltstone, (sedimentary rocks). An alluvial fan is a fan- or cone-shaped deposit of sediment crossed and built up by streams. If a fan is built up by debris flows it is properly called a debris cone or colluvial fan. These flows come from a single point source at the apex of the fan, and over time move to occupy many positions on the fan surface. Fans are typically found where a canyon draining from mountainous terrain emerges out onto a flatter plain, and especially along fault-bounded mountain fronts. Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is a term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. In usage in the United States, a bayou (or , from Cajun French) is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area, and can be either an extremely slow-moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), or a marshy lake or wetland. The name "bayou" can also refer to a creek whose current reverses daily due to tides and which contains brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton. Bayous are commonly found in the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States, notably the Mississippi River Delta, with the states of Louisiana and Texas being famous for them. A bayou is frequently an anabranch or minor braid of a braided channel that is moving much more slowly than the mainstem, often becoming boggy and stagnant. Though fauna varies by region, many bayous are home to crawfish, certain species of shrimp, other shellfish, catfish, frogs, toads, American alligators, American crocodiles, herons, turtles, spoonbills, snakes, leeches, and a myriad of other species.
  Etymology.
  The word was first used by the English in Louisiana and is thought to originate from the Choctaw word "bayuk", which means "small stream". The first settlements of Bayou Teche, and other bayous, were by the Creoles, and that is why bayous are associated with Creole culture. A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. "Main Stem" is 1942 instrumental by Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra. Although recorded in 1942, the single would not be released until 1944 where it was Duke Ellington's last of four number one's on the Harlem Hit Parade. "Main Stem" also peaked at number twenty on the pop chart. Water is a transparent and nearly colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of Earth's streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most living organisms. Its chemical formula is HO, meaning that its molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, that are connected by covalent bonds. Water strictly refers to the liquid state of that substance, that prevails at standard ambient temperature and pressure; but it often refers also to its solid state (ice) or its gaseous state (steam or water vapor). It also occurs in nature as snow, glaciers, ice packs and icebergs, clouds, fog, dew, aquifers, and atmospheric humidity. A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, "the sea" is the interconnected system of Earth's salty, oceanic watersconsidered as one global ocean or as several principal oceanic divisions. The sea moderates Earth's climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. Although the sea has been traveled and explored since prehistory, the modern scientific study of the seaoceanographydates broadly to the British "Challenger" expedition of the 1870s. The sea is conventionally divided into up to five large oceanic sectionsincluding the International Hydrographic Organization's four named oceans (the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic) and the Southern Ocean; smaller, second-order sections, such as the Mediterranean, are known as "seas". An ocean (the sea of classical antiquity) is a body of saline water that composes much of a planet's hydrosphere. On Earth, an ocean is one of the major conventional divisions of the World Ocean, which covers almost 71% of its surface. These are, in descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. The word "sea" is often used interchangeably with "ocean" in American English but, strictly speaking, a sea is a body of saline water (generally a division of the world ocean) partly or fully enclosed by land. A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; examples are "run" in some parts of the United States, "burn" in Scotland and northeast England, and "beck" in northern England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague. A distributary , or a distributary channel , is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel . They are a common feature of river deltas . The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation . The opposite of a distributary is a tributary . Distributaries usually occur as a stream nears a lake or the ocean , but they can occur inland as well , such as on alluvial fans or when a tributary stream bifurcates as it nears its confluence with a larger stream . In some cases , a minor distributary can divert so much water from the main channel that it can become the main route . The World Ocean or global ocean (colloquially the sea or the ocean) is the interconnected system of Earth's oceanic waters, and comprises the bulk of the hydrosphere, covering almost 71% of Earth's surface, with a total volume of 1.332 billion cubic kilometers (351 quintillion US gallons). A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as a "bayou", "beck", "branch", "brook", "burn", "creek", "crick", "ghyll", "gill", "kill", "lick", "mill race", "race", "rill", "river", "rivulet", "run", "runnel", "streamage", "syke", or "wash". A drainage basin or catchment basin is an extent or an area of land where all surface water from rain, melting snow, or ice converges to a single point at a lower elevation, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean. Thus if a tributary stream joins a brook that in turn joins a small river which is a tributary of a larger river, there is a series of successively larger (and lower elevation) drainage basins. For instance, the Missouri and Ohio rivers are within their own drainage basins and also within the drainage basin of the Mississippi River.
candidates: main mississippi river sea
answer: sea