The excess water spills into the stream's floodplain. Downtown Davenport, July 1993. Landsat images of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, in normal and flood stages. Levees are raised embankments that contain flood-stage rivers. Urbanization, with its accompanying asphalt and concrete, provides no temporary storage for precipitation, and this increases the potential for floods.
Wetlands store large amounts of water, and their destruction likewise increases danger from floods.
Any structures built in the floodplain decrease the volume available for flood waters, so that floods rise higher in the presence of many buildings. Sequence of stream erosion. Evolution of a floodplain. Meanders in the Sweetwater River, Wyoming. Formation of oxbow lakes.