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Article: Drainage Basins and Drainage Patterns
- Article from:
- World of Earth Science
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Drainage basins and drainage patterns
A drainage basin is the
area
that encompasses all the land from which
water
flows into a particular stream or river. Stream is a synonym of river, and although typically something called a stream is smaller than a river, here, any flowing body of water in a clearly defined channel will be called a stream. The size of a drainage basin can vary from being as small as a few square miles or kilometers to as large as part of a continent. An example of a divide is the
continental divide
of
North America
, which separates streams that ultimately empty into one ocean (the Pacific Ocean) from those that ultimately empty into another (the
Gulf of Mexico