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,: "a narrow part or passage; specifically a strait connecting two bodies of water —usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction". 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".Heinrich Ries and Thomas L. Watson, Engineering Geology (1915), p. 278. Like a dam, this "raises the water level for a short distance upriver".Richard T. T. Forman, Urban Ecology: Science of Cities (2014), p. 195. A narrows is also typically a good location for trapping migrating fish.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 Furthermore, a narrows is "an important topographical feature for wind mixing",Howard J. Freeland, David M. Farmer, Colin D. Levings, Fjord Oceanography (1980), p. 216. an effect where a wind chill may form ice while the surrounding temperature remains above freezing.
See also Water gap The Narrows, which separates Staten Island from Brooklyn and connects the upper and lower sections of New York Bay. The Narrows, which is the narrowest section of Zion Canyon in Zion National Park, Utah.
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