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The headwaters of a river are the smaller streams that feed a river, and make up the river's source. [4] These streams may be small and flow rapidly down the sides of mountains . [ 5 ] All of the land uphill of a river that feeds it with water in this way is in that river's drainage basin or watershed. [ 4 ]
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 ...
A definition given by the state of Montana agrees, stating that a river source is never a confluence but is "in a location that is the farthest, along water miles, from where that river ends." [3] Under this definition, neither a lake (excepting lakes with no inflows) nor a confluence of tributaries can be a true river source, though both often ...
The water basin of the Wabash River; the other rivers (not including the Ohio River) are tributaries of the Wabash River. The Vermillion River (and its forks) is a highlighted example of a tributary of the Wabash River. The Wabash River is also a tributary of the Ohio River, which in turn is a tributary of the Mississippi River.
River ecosystems are prime examples of lotic ecosystems. Lotic refers to flowing water, from the Latin lotus, meaning washed. Lotic waters range from springs only a few centimeters wide to major rivers kilometers in width. [5]
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.
The stream order or waterbody order is a positive whole number used in geomorphology and hydrology to indicate the level of branching in a river system.. There are various approaches [1] to the topological ordering of rivers or sections of rivers based on their distance from the source ("top down" [2]) or from the confluence (the point where two rivers merge) or river mouth ("bottom up" [3 ...
As rivers flow across the landscape, they generally increase in size, merging with other rivers. The network of rivers thus formed is a drainage system . These systems take on four general patterns: dendritic, radial, rectangular, and trellis.