A watershed is an area of land that drains or “sheds” water into a specific waterbody. Every body of water has a watershed. Watersheds drain rainfall and snowmelt into streams and rivers. These smaller bodies of water flow into larger ones, including lakes, bays, and oceans.
How do you find drainage area?
The term “drainage area” is defined as the land area where precipitation falls off into creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. It is a land feature that can be identified by tracing a line along the highest elevation between two areas on a map, often a ridge .
What do you call the land area that drains water?
A watershed is an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel.
What are the 5 main drainage areas?
The map shows the major North American drainage basins, or wateresheds, which drain into the Atlantic Ocean, Hudson Bay, the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the gulf of Mexico and teh Caribbean Sea . Each watershed is shown in its own colour, with subdivisions shown in tonal variations.
What are the 4 types of drainage patterns?
there are 4 types of drainage patterns on the basis of their flowing pattern- dendritic, trellis, radial and rectangular .
What is a subwatershed?
Water School
Large watersheds may contain hundreds or thousands of smaller subwatersheds that drain into the river or other water body . The Brazos River watershed encompasses more than 42,000 square miles and includes many smaller streams and rivers with their own smaller watersheds.
What is the contributing drainage area?
Contributing drainage area (A) is the most statistically significant explanatory watershed variable and the only explanatory watershed variable that is used in the regression equations. Contributing drainage area is the total area that contributes runoff upstream of the stream site of interest.
Why are drainage basins important to humans?
Drainage basins are often described as the area that contributes flow upstream of the mouth , or confluence, of a watercourse. ... Because of this interconnection and linkages between upstream and downstream ecosystems, drainage basins provide a useful unit for considering and managing most environmental systems.
What is MAP drainage?
In geomorphology, drainage systems, also known as river systems, are the patterns formed by the streams, rivers, and lakes in a particular drainage basin . ... The number, size, and shape of the drainage basins found in an area vary and the larger the topographic map, the more information on the drainage basin is available.
What are the 5 main drainage areas in North America?
The basins are the Atlantic Seaboard basin, the Gulf of Mexico basin, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin, the Pacific basin, the Arctic basin, the Hudson Bay basin, and the Great Basin . Together, the principal basins span the continent with the exception of numerous smaller endorheic basins.
What is the largest drainage basin in the world?
The Amazon Basin , in northern South America, is the largest in the world. The Amazon River and all of its tributaries drain an area more than 7 million square kilometers (about 3 million square miles). Structural basins are formed by tectonic activity.
Which is the largest river in the world?
- Nile: 4,132 miles.
- Amazon: 4,000 miles.
- Yangtze: 3,915 miles.
What are the major types of drainage patterns?
- Dendritic drainage pattern.
- Parallel drainage pattern.
- Trellis drainage pattern.
- Rectangular drainage pattern.
- Radial drainage pattern.
- Centripetal drainage pattern.
- Deranged drainage pattern.
- Annular drainage pattern.
What is the most common drainage pattern?
A dendritic drainage pattern is the most common form and looks like the branching pattern of tree roots. It develops in regions underlain by homogeneous material.
What is the name of drainage pattern?
The drainage patterns are divided into the following ten types: Trellised Drainage Pattern . Dendritic Drainage Pattern . Rectangular Drainage Pattern .
What is the largest watershed in America?
The Mississippi River watershed is the biggest watershed in the United States, draining more than three million square kilometers (one million square miles) of land.
