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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.
Drainage basin of the Ohio River, part of the Mississippi River drainage basin. In hydrology, the drainage basin is a logical unit of focus [clarification needed] for studying the movement of water within the hydrological cycle. The process of finding a drainage boundary is referred to as watershed delineation. Finding the area and extent of a ...
Stream order is an important aspect of a drainage basin. It is defined as the measure of the position of a stream in the hierarchy of streams. Tributaries are given a number one greater than that of the river or stream into which they discharge. So, for example, all immediate tributaries of the main stem are given the number "2".
A diagram of a possible river with the Strahler number of each tributary labeled. In hydrology, a stream order is a positive integer used to describe the level of river branching in a drainage basin. [18] Several systems of stream order exist, one of which is the Strahler number. In this system, the first tributaries of a river are 1st order ...
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 ...
Drainage basins would ideally be on all of them, but for many rivers they simply aren't available, especially outside the U.S. Topography is nice, but can be tricky to get to look good and for rivers in non-mountainous areas might not be important.
Map of major river basins These are the major U.S. river basins in the U.S., as designated by the U.S. Water Resources Council. [ 1 ] Each of these river basins contain a number of smaller river basins.
A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, [1] watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges , and may be in the form of a single range of hills or mountains , known as a dividing range .