Canyon

canyon, deep, steep-walled, V-shaped valley cut by a river through resistant rock. Such valleys often occur in the upper courses of rivers, where the stream has a strong, swift current that digs its valley relatively rapidly. Smaller valleys of similar appearance are called gorges. The term canyon is taken from the Spanish word cañón, meaning “tube.”

The largest and most famous canyons have been cut through arid or semiarid lands by swift streams fed by rain or melting snow transported from moister regions upstream. The walls remain steep and angular because they are not worn and softened by frequent rainfall and surface drainage. Notable canyons in the United States are those of the Colorado, Snake, and Arkansas rivers, the Rio Grande, and the Yellowstone River. (See Grand Canyon; Hells Canyon; Arkansas River; Rio Grande; Yellowstone National Park.)

Cutting across the continental shelves and down the continental slopes beneath the sea in many parts of the world are prominent submarine canyons. A few of these landforms—such as the Zemchung Canyon in the Bering Sea and Monterey Canyon near the coast of California—occur on the same enormous scale as the Grand Canyon. In addition, a number of submarine canyons are associated with present rivers, like Hudson Canyon, off New York City. The heads of these canyons were cut by rivers at a time when sea level was several hundred feet lower than today, probably during the Pleistocene Epoch (between 2.6 million and 11,700 years ago) when considerably more water than at present was tied up in continental ice sheets. The continuations of the canyons down the continental slopes were probably cut and are maintained by deep-water currents containing large amounts of suspended sediment or by sudden avalanche-like movements of loose sedimentary material that collected in the upper parts of the submarine canyons.