List of drainage basins by area
- List of drainage basins by area
This is a list of ocean, mediterranean sea, river, and lake drainage basins larger than 400,000 square kilometers (154,440 square miles), sorted by area. It includes drainage basins which do not flow to the ocean (endorheic basins). It does not include the drainage basins for oceanic seas, as the boundaries of these seas are set by convention and do not necessarily correspond to hydrologically coherent areas.
The oceans drain approximately 83% of the land in the world. The other 17% – an area larger than the basin of the Arctic Ocean – drains to internal endorheic basins.
Note that there are substantial areas of the world that do not "drain" in the commonly understood sense. In Arctic deserts much of the snowfall sublimates directly into the air and does not melt into flowing water, while in equatorial deserts precipitation may evaporate before joining any substantial water course. However, these areas can still be included in topographically defined basins if one considers the hypothetical flow of water (or ice), and thus nutrients or pollutants, over the surface of the ground (or ice sheet); this is the approach taken here. For example, the Antarctic ice sheet can be divided into basins [http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/divide/poster/background1.gif] , and most of Libya is included the Mediterranean Sea basin even though almost no water from the interior actually reaches the sea.
Basins
Notes
ee also
*List of rivers by length
*List of rivers by average discharge
External links
* [http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/index.cfm?p=2&theme=2 Links to maps of watersheds]
* [http://www.worldlakes.org Lake database]
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