Kit Lesson 9: When Streams Join: Modeling Tributaries
Similar to trees, waterway have a trunk and branch, where the trunk is the large river stream and the smaller streams (tributaries) resembles the branches. Together the trunk and its tributaries act as a system for draining the land while surrounding area drained by the trunk and its tributaries is called a drainage basin and/or watershed. Many drainage basins exist in the United States,reach divided by a ridge, known as a divide. The highest divide in North America is the western Continental Divide, which runs the length of the Rocky Mountains and separates the large basin that drains water west into the Pacific Ocean from the large basin that drains water east into the Gulf of Mexico. The drainage pattern that the stream creates depends on the shape and composition of the land over which they flow, dendritic patterns are most common and are investigated in this unit. Students are creating small stream tables but should observe the beginnings of the dendritic pattern.