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A river basin is an area of land drained by a river and its tributaries. River basins have typical
features, these include:
Tributaries - smaller rivers flowing into a larger river.
A Watershed - an area of highland surrounding the river basin.
A confluence - where a river joins another river.
Source - the start of a river.
Mouth - Where a river meets a lake, the sea or an ocean.
The diagram below shows these features.
Topography:
Generally, topography plays a big part in how fast runoff will reach a river. Rain that falls in
steep mountainous areas will reach the primary river in the drainage basin faster than flat or
lightly sloping areas (e.g., > 1% gradient).
Shape:
Shape will contribute to the speed with which the runoff reaches a river. A long thin catchment
will take longer to drain than a circular catchment.
Size:
Size will help determine the amount of water reaching the river, as the larger the catchment the
greater the potential for flooding. It is also determined on the basis of length and width of the
drainage basin.
Soil type:
Soil type will help determine how much water reaches the river. Certain soil types such
as sandy soils are very free-draining, and rainfall on sandy soil is likely to be absorbed by the
ground. However, soils containing clay can be almost impermeable and therefore rainfall on clay
soils will run off and contribute to flood volumes. After prolonged rainfall even free-draining soils
can become saturated, meaning that any further rainfall will reach the river rather than being
absorbed by the ground. If the surface is impermeable the precipitation will create surface run-off
which will lead to higher risk of flooding; if the ground is permeable, the precipitation will
infiltrate the soil.
Land use:
Land use can contribute to the volume of water reaching the river, in a similar way to clay soils.
For example, rainfall on roofs, pavements, and roads will be collected by rivers with almost no
absorption into the groundwater.
Drainage Density:
It measures the efficiency of the basin drainage (i.e. of how well or how poorly a watershed is
drained by rivers). It depends upon both climate (e.g. rainfall regime) and physical characteristics
(e.g. geology, slope, soil, land cover) of the drainage basin. For equal climatic characteristics it
can be used as proxy information for permeability.
Amazon Basin
Indus Basin:
The Trans boundary Indus river basin has a total area of 1.12 million km2 distributed between
Pakistan (47 percent), India (39 percent), China (8 percent) and Afghanistan (6 percent).The Indus
river basin stretches from the Himalayan Mountains in the north to the dry alluvial plains of Sindh
province in Pakistan in the south and finally flows out into the Arabian Sea. In Pakistan, the Indus
river basin covers around 520 000 km², or 65 percent of the territory, comprising the whole of the
provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and most of the territory of Sindh province and the
eastern part of Baluchistan. The drainage area lying in India is approximately 440 000 km2, nearly
14 percent of the total area of the country, in the States of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh,
Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Chandigarh. Only about 14 percent of the total catchment area
of the basin lies in China, covering just 1 percent of the area of the country, and Afghanistan,
where it accounts for 11 percent of the country’s area. Very roughly, at least 300 million people
are estimated to live in the Indus basin. Climate is not uniform over the Indus river basin. It varies
from subtropical arid and semiarid to temperate sub humid on the plains of Sindh and Punjab
provinces to alpine in the mountainous highlands of the north. Annual precipitation ranges
between 100 and 500 mm in the lowlands to a maximum of 2 000 mm on mountain slopes. Snowfall
at higher altitudes (above 2 500 m) accounts for most of the river runoff .The Upper Indus river
basin is a high mountain region and the mountains limit the intrusion of the monsoon, the influence
of which weakens northwestward. Most of the precipitation falls in winter and spring and
originates from the west. Monsoonal incursions bring occasional rain to trans-Himalayan areas
but, even during summer months, not all precipitation derives from monsoon sources. Climatic
variables are strongly influenced by altitude. Northern valley floors are arid with annual
precipitation from 100 to 200 mm. Totals increase to 600 mm at 4 400 m, and glaciological studies
suggest accumulation rates of 1 500 to 2 000 mm at 5 500 m. Winter precipitation (October to
March) is highly spatially correlated across the Upper Indus basin, north and south of the
Himalayan divide. From 1961 to 1999 there were significant increases in winter, summer and
annual precipitation and significant warming occurred in winter whilst summer showed a cooling
trend. These trends will impact upon water resource availability (. The climate in the Indus plains
is arid to semi-arid.
Indus basin