A narrows or narrow (used interchangeably but usually in the plural form), is a restricted land or water passage. Most commonly a narrows is a strait,[1] though it can also be a water gap.
A narrows may form where a stream passes through a tilted bed of hard rock lying between two softer beds: "[i]f the hard beds are vertical, so that their outcrop does not shift as erosion proceeds, a narrows is developed".[2] Like a dam, this "raises the water level for a short distance upriver".[3] A narrows is also typically a good location for trapping migrating fish.[4][5][6] Furthermore, a narrows is "an important topographical feature for wind mixing",[7] an effect where a wind chill may form ice while the surrounding temperature remains above freezing.
- ^ "narrow". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.: "a narrow part or passage; specifically a strait connecting two bodies of water —usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction".
- ^ Heinrich Ries and Thomas L. Watson, Engineering Geology (1915), p. 278.
- ^ Richard T. T. Forman, Urban Ecology: Science of Cities (2014), p. 195.
- ^ Roy L. Carlson, Luke Dalla Bona, Early Human Occupation in British Columbia (2011), p. 65.
- ^ Frank Tough, As Their Natural Resources Fail: Native Peoples and the Economic History of Northern Manitoba, 1870-1930 (2011), p. 156.
- ^ Matthew Stein, When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance (2008), p. 158
- ^ Howard J. Freeland, David M. Farmer, Colin D. Levings, Fjord Oceanography (1980), p. 216.