Glossary

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Glossary terms for letter: G

Gabion:

A wire mesh basket filled with rock that can be used in multiples as a structural unit.

Geogrid:

A fabric with high-tensile strength and width, frequent, apertures consisting of long- lasting plastic materials.

Geotextile Fabric:

A manmade fabric used in the control of soil erosion. The fabric is available in roles of various widths and lengths and usually vary from one manufacturer to the other. Also known as Filter Fabric.

Grade Stabilization:

The maintenance of a gentle, non-eroding gradient on a watercourse of land surface.

Grade Stabilization Structure:

A structure designed to reduce channel grade in natural or constructed watercourses to prevent erosion of a channel that results from excessive grade in the channel bed or artificially increased channel flows.

Grass-Lined Channel (Runoff Conveyance Measure):

A swale vegetated with grass, which is dry except following storms and serves to convey specified concentrated storm water runoff volumes, without resulting in erosion, to disposal locations.

Gravel:

Sediment particles larger than sand and ranging from two (2) to 64 mm in diameter.

Gravity Retaining Walls:

Retaining structures that resist lateral earth forces and overturning primarily by their weight.

Greenbelt:

Strip of trees and shrubs growing parallel to a stream that prevents overuse of the top of bank area by man, animals, and machinery. This strip of vegetation also retards rainfall runoff down the bank slope and provides a root system which binds soil particles together.

Groin:

A narrow, elongated coastal-engineering structure built on the beach perpendicular to the trend of the beach. Its purpose is to trap longshore drift to build up a section of beach.

Groundwater:

That portion of the soil or rock where all pore spaces are completely saturated; the water that occurs in the earth below the depth to which water will rise in a well.

Gully:

A channel or void in the landscape associated with erosion and concentrated form of water. A gully is distinguished from a rill by its depth - a gully is too deep to be crossed by farm equipment while a rill can be crossed and may be smoothed by ordinary tillage methods (i.e., breaking or discing.) Active gullies are usually significant producers of sediment.

Revised 5/15/07