1.1 Drainage Basin System

Hydrology and
fluvial
geomorphology
目录
CONTENTS
01 The drainage basin system

02 Discharge relationships within drainage basins
03 River channel processes and landforms
04 The human impact
•The drainage basin system
01
Outputs: evaporation, evapotranspiration and river discharge.
Stores: interception, soil water, surface water, ground water, and channel storage.
Flows: above ground – throughfall, stemflow, overland flow, and channel flow.
Flows: below ground – infiltration, percolation, throughflow, groundwater, and baseflow.
Underground water: water tables, ground water, recharge, and springs.
The Hydrological Cycle
• Before you can focus on the drainage basin system you must make sure
you understand the hydrological cycle.
• The Hydrological Cycle is the continuous movement of water on the
Earth between the atmosphere (air), lithosphere (rocks) and biosphere
(plants and animals). It is powered by the Sun
• The hydrological cycle is a closed system
• There are no gains or losses from outside the system (nothing is added or taken
away)
• The same water has been cycling round the water cycle for millions of years!
You can split parts of the hydrological cycle
into ….
• Flows/transfers = movement of water from one store to another
• Store = where water is kept
• See if you can pick out the flows/transfers and the stores in the diagram
above.
The Drainage Basin System
• A drainage basin is the total area of land drained by a
river and its tributaries.（rivers catchment ）
• Watershed, mouth, source, confluence, tributaries
• Rivers begin at their source normally on highland and
end at their mouth in the sea/ an ocean or lake.
• They flow through a drainage basin that has higher
land at the side, known as a watershed. All the water
that falls into one drainage basin will flow through
smaller rivers known as tributaries and eventually end
up in the main river flowing to the mouth.
• Where on river like a tributary joins another river this
is known as a confluence.
The drainage basin system shows how water
moves around just one drainage basin.
• It is an open system. This means that water moves across its boundaries
into and from other drainage basins, the atmosphere, oceans and seas.
You need to be able to
define each of the
terms which are shown
on the diagram above.
water vapor or moisture escape

from the stomata of leaves
• Inputs to the drainage basin
system = Precipitation
• Outputs = Evapotranspiration, river
channel taking water to the sea
• Stores = River channels, lakes,
vegetation (through interception),
soil moisture, ground water.
• Flows = stemflow, throughfall(drip),
infiltration, percolation, overland
flow, throughflow, baseflow
Elements/components of the system
Name each store Name each transfer Name the Input Name each Output
Transpiration
Precipitation
Throughfall +
stemflow
Interception by
vegetation
Infiltration
Throughflow
Soil water storage
Evaporation
The water Surface (overland)
table runoff
(position
Percolation
varies)
Surface
storage -
Groundwater Groundwater lakes, rivers,
storage (base) flow sea,
depression
storage
Saturated or impermeable rock
Components of the drainage basin and their
relationships with each other.
• If one part of the drainage basin system changes, it can affect all the
others.
• Precipitation
• Precipitation can vary in its total amount, intensity, type, distribution and
variability.
• Precipitation has a relationship with all the other elements within the
drainage basin, and if you can change any of the variables above (e.g. the
amount of rainfall) this will change other pieces of the drainage basin.
• Interception
• Interception refers to water that is caught and stored by
vegetation(stems, branches, twigs and leaves) before
precipitation arrives at the ground surface. There are three
main parts to it.
• 1) Interception loss-Water that is retained by plant surfaces
and water is later evaporated away or absorbed by the plant
• 2) Throughfall- Water that falls through the gaps in
vegetation or drops from leaves, twigs or stems
• 3) Stemflow- Water that trickles along twigs and branches
and finally down the main trunk
• Interception varies depending on the type of
vegetation. It is less from grasses than from woodland.
In agricultural land, interception rates depend on the
density of the crops planted. (coniferous vs deciduous)
• Evaporation
• This is the process whereby liquid or solid is changed into gas. Factors
that affect the rates and amount of evaporation are…
• Infiltration
• Infiltration is the process by which water soaks into or is absorbed by
the topsoil.
• Infiltration capacity is the maximum rate at which rain can be absorbed
by a topsoil in a given condition
• Once a period of rainfall begins, infiltration into the soil occurs, and the
infiltration capacity will gradually reduce until the soil is fully saturated
and can not absorb any more water. At this point overland flow/surface
run off will increase.
The table below shows how various factors affect the rates of infiltration and surface run off
Definition: the subsurface water that
Ground Water occupies the cracks, joints, bedding planes,
pores, cavities, spaces of permeable
bedrocks.
• Ground water refers to subsurface water. Groundwater comes from

precipitation onto the land. It infiltrates the soil and
then percolates more slowly downwards into the bedrock.
• The upper level of this zone is called the water table.
• The amount of groundwater in the ground and therefore the water table
varies.
• Ground water discharge and recharge
• Groundwater systems are dynamic and water is continuously in slow
motion down gradient from areas of recharge to areas of discharge.
• Recharge refers to the filling of water in pores where water has been
dried up or extracted (taken out) by human activities.
• Discharge of ground water refers to water from underground coming up
to the surface
• Most ground water is
found within a few
hundred metres of the
surface. However, it has
been found at depths of
4 km! In large aquifer
systems, tens or even
hundreds of years may
elapse in the passage of
water through this
subterranean part of the
hydrological cycle.
•
How does recharge occur?
• Infiltration of precipitation (rainfall/snow-melt),
• seepage through the banks and beds of rivers, lakes or canals.
• Leakage from adjacent aquifers and rocks
• What is the name for a specific area where discharge of groundwater
occurs?
• -The aquifer fills up until water reaches the land surface, where it
flows from the ground as springs.
• – Water can also seep through the beds of rivers providing
the baseflow of rivers
• How else are groundwater supplies changed?
• -Groundwater leakage into a neighbouring aquifer
• -Artificial abstraction e.g. wells
Confined groundwater and aquifers
• Aquifer is just the name for a

rock underground which stores
groundwater in it.
• Some aquifers
are often confined (stuck in a
layer of rock) by overlying
impermeable strata
(an aquiclude),
• Or partially confined by low
permeability strata
(an aquitard).
• Porosity is a measure of how much of a rocks volume is open
Two separate space (pores). This space can be between grains or within cracks
characteristics of rocks or cavities of the rock.
control how effective they • Permeability is a measure of the ease with which water can
are as aquifers: move through a porous rock (ability to transmit water)
(porous or non porous) (permeable or impermeable)

• If a rock has few pores it has low porosity as water
can not be stored or transferred through it
• Examples of low porosity rock is crystalline
Some key igneous rock and glacial till
ideas about • If the pores in a rock exist but are tightly packed
transfer of water is very slow but water holding is
the porosity still possible
and • An example of a rock which has pores so is porous
but is impermeable because they are tightly
permeability packed is clay
of rocks • If the pores are interconnected with big gaps
between them then the rock/soil may be porous
and permeable e.g. sandstone.
• The rocks which make the best aquifers are both porous
and permeable so what can flow into them. Often they
need to be above an impermeable rock layer, so water is
not lost from the base of the aquifer.

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Hydrology and

01 The drainage basin system

water vapor or moisture escape

• Ground water refers to subsurface water. Groundwater comes from

• Aquifer is just the name for a

(porous or non porous) (permeable or impermeable)

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