The Drainage Basin System

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The drainage basin system The hydrological cycle is the process whereby water is continually cycled between the land, sea and atmosphere - it is a closed system because the water is cycled in that one system, meaning that no water is brought in or lost to the outside. The drainage basin system is one part of the hydrological cycle. It is a land area which is drained by a river. It is an open system because water is brought in and taken out. Water is brought in to the drainage basin through energy from the sun and precipitation - the sun evaporates bodies of water which cool and condense in to clouds to bring precipitation in the form of rain, snow, sleet or hail. Water is taken out through percolation, evaporation and surface runoff - when there is a lot of water brought in to the system, water can be percolated deep beneath the ground to fill the gaps in the rock layer. When theses gaps are completely full, the ground becomes highly saturated and puddles of water will form on the ground to be lost straight to evaporation - by this point surface runoff will have increased and water will run straight in to the river. Water can be stored within the drainage basin, there are vegetation stores, surface stores, groundwater stores, and soil moisture stores - when it rains and interception takes place, plants and trees retain the water and store it to be used for photosynthesis. Lakes and puddles can also store water but only temporality as it will be infiltrated and stored in the pore space of the soil before eventually percolating down in to the rock layer to be stored in the spaces between the rock. Water can be transferred through the system by a means of stem flow, infiltration, surface run off, through flow, channel flow, percolation - when water collects on tree leaves by interception, it flows through the trunk by stem flow to reach the soil where it

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