Damming

Lake Erie is known for seiches, especially when strong winds blow from southwest to northeast. In 1844, a 22-foot seiche breached a 14-foot-high sea wall killing 78 people and damming the ice to the extent that Niagara Falls temporarily stopped flowing.

Mounting research blames a confluence of rising sea levels driven by global warming and the damming and dredging of key rivers and their tributaries for the rapid sinking and shrinking of Asia's seven major delta systems, from the Indus in Pakistan to the Pearl in China.

To divide up anything so continuous as literature and art into sections like a bookcase is uncommonly like damming up a portion of a stream to look at the fish in it.