14605 IUPAC Gold Book - drainage basin 10.1351/goldbook.14605 14605 current synonyms: catchment, catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water basin, watershed 1 Area of land where water from rain or snow melt drains downhill into a body of water, such as a river, lake, dam, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean. A drainage basin includes the streams and rivers that convey the water as well as the land surfaces from which water drains into those channels, separated from adjacent basins by a drainage divide. A drainage basin acts like a funnel, collecting all the water within the area covered by the basin and channeling it into a waterway. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a ridge, hill, or mountain, which is known as a water divide. estuary https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/14661 wetland https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/15136 PAC, 2009, 81, 829. 'Glossary of terms used in ecotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2009)' on page 870 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-08-07-09) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14605/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14605/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14605/plain Citation: 'drainage basin' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.14605 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-08-01T06:43:03+00:00