Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Watershed delineation is the process of identifying the boundary of a watershed, also referred to as a catchment, drainage basin, or river basin.It is an important step in many areas of environmental science, engineering, and management, for example to study flooding, aquatic habitat, or water pollution.
Most lakes are not actually endorheic, but endorheic basins may not have standing water, or have water only seasonally. The most significant endorheic basins are these: Great Basin covering most of Nevada, the western part of Utah, and smaller amounts of other U.S. states; Great Divide Basin on the Continental Divide in Wyoming; Guzmán Basin
A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide , [ 1 ] made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills .
A bifurcation is where the watershed is effectively in a river bed, in a wetland, or underground. The largest watershed of this type is the bifurcation of the Orinoco in the north of South America, whose main stream empties into the Caribbean, but which also drains into the South Atlantic via the Casiquiare canal and Amazon River.
Dendritic drainage: the Yarlung Tsangpo River, Tibet, seen from space: snow cover has melted in the valley system. In geomorphology, drainage systems, also known as river systems, are the patterns formed by the streams, rivers, and lakes in a particular drainage basin. They are governed by the topography of land, whether a particular region is ...
The "flow regime" of a river or stream includes the general patterns of discharge over annual or decadal time scales, and may capture seasonal changes in flow. [7] [8] While water flow is strongly determined by slope, flowing waters can alter the general shape or direction of the stream bed, a characteristic also known as geomorphology. The ...
Stream capture, river capture, river piracy or stream piracy is a geomorphological phenomenon occurring when a stream or river drainage system or watershed is diverted from its own bed, and flows down to the bed of a neighbouring stream. This can happen for several reasons, including:
[clarification needed] Water enters the mainstem from the river's drainage basin, the land area through which the mainstem and its tributaries flow. [3] A drainage basin may also be referred to as a watershed or catchment. [3] Strahler diagram. Only a segment of the mainstem gets the highest number.