Drainage basin

A drainage basin or catchment basin is an extent or an area of land where all surface water from rain, melting snow, or ice converges to a single point at a lower elevation, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean. Thus if a tributary stream joins a brook that in turn joins a small river which is a tributary of a larger river, there is a series of successively larger (and lower elevation) drainage basins. For instance, the Missouri and Ohio rivers are within their own drainage basins and also within the drainage basin of the Mississippi River.

Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment area, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In North America, the term watershed is commonly used to mean a drainage basin, though in other English-speaking countries, it is used only in its original sense, to mean a drainage divide, the former meaning an area, the latter the high elevation perimeter of that area. Drainage basins drain into other drainage basins in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins combining into larger drainage basins.

In closed ("endorheic") drainage basins the water converges to a single point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake, a dry lake, or a point where surface water is lost underground. The drainage basin includes all the streams and rivers that convey the water towards the sink, as well as the land surfaces from which water drains into those channels.

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