Drainage divide

A drainage divide, water divide, divide, ridgeline,watershed, water parting, or (in Canada) height of land, is the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins. In hilly country, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a single range of hills or mountains, known as a dividing range. In flat country—especially where the ground is marshy—the divide may be harder to discern.

A valley floor divide is a low drainage divide that runs across a valley, sometimes created by deposition or stream capture.

Since ridgelines are easy to see and agree about, drainage divides are often natural borders defining political boundaries, as with the 18th century North America Royal Proclamation of 1763 that preceded the American Revolution.

Types

Drainage divides can be grouped in three types:

Valley-floor divides

A valley-floor divide occurs on the bottom of a valley and arises as a result of subsequent depositions, such as scree, in a valley through which a river originally flowed continuously.

Continental Divide of the Americas

The Continental Divide of the Americas (also known as the Continental Gulf of Division, the Great Divide, or merely the Continental Divide) is the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas. The Continental Divide extends from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan, and separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from (1) those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean (including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea), and (2) along the northernmost reaches of the Divide, those river systems that drain into the Arctic Ocean.

Though there are many other hydrological divides in the Americas, the Great Divide is by far the most prominent of these because it tends to follow a line of high peaks along the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains and Andes, at a generally much higher elevation than the other hydrological divisions.

Geography

The Continental Divide of the Americas begins at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, the westernmost point on the mainland of the Americas. The Divide crosses northern Alaska into the Yukon, then zig-zags south into British Columbia via the Cassiar Mountains and Omineca Mountains and northern Nechako Plateau to Summit Lake, north of the city of Prince George and just south of the community of McLeod Lake. From there the Divide traverses the McGregor Plateau to the spine of the Rockies, following the crest of the Canadian Rockies southeast to the 120th meridian west, from there forming the boundary between southern British Columbia and southern Alberta.

Central Pacific

Central Pacific may refer to: