Abstract
A river basin is commonly defined as the area of land drained by a river and its tributaries.1 It plays a vital part in the hydrologic cycle whereby water vapor in the atmosphere condenses, is precipitated on the earth in the form of rain, hail, or snow, and is returned to the atmosphere as vapor.2 One of the basic properties of water is that it flows and that (except under pressure) it always seeks its lowest level — hence its tendency to sink through porous surfaces or to run off impervious surfaces, and its ability to transport fragments of loose material which, given sufficient steepness of slope, enable the water to carve stream channels.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Teclaff, L.A. (1967). The Physical Unity of the River Basin. In: The River Basin in History and Law. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1025-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1025-7_2
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