Coulee

This article is about the valley-related landform. For lava dome flows, see Lava coulées. For other uses, see Coulee (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Coolie.
This side canyon of Grand Coulee in Washington was carved by the Missoula floods.
A view through a coulee in Alberta, with steep but lower sides, and water in the bottom.

Coulee, or coulée (/ˈkuːleɪ/ or /ˈkuːliː/),[1] is any of various different landforms, all of which are kinds of valleys or drainage zones. The word coulee comes from the Canadian French coulée, from French couler 'to flow'.

The term is often used interchangeably in the Great Plains for any of a number of water features, from ponds to creeks.

In southern Louisiana the word coulée (also spelled coolie) originally meant a gully or ravine usually dry or intermittent but becoming sizable during rainy weather. As stream channels were dredged or canalized, the term was increasingly applied to perennial streams, generally smaller than bayous. The term is also used for small ditches or canals in the swamp.[2]

In the northwestern United States, coulee is defined as a large, steep-walled, trench-like trough, which also include spillways and flood channels incised into the basalt plateau.[3]

  1. ^ "coulee". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ^ Edwards, Jay Dearborn; Nicolas Kariouk Pecquet du Bellay de Verton (2004). A Creole lexicon: architecture, landscape, people. Louisiana State University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-8071-2764-3. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  3. ^ Baker, Victor (2010). Migon, Piotr (ed.). Channeled Scablands: A Megaflood Landscape, in Geomorphological Landscapes of the World. Springer. pp. 21–28. ISBN 9789048130542.