Encyclopedia > Continental divide

  Article Content

Continental divide

A continental divide is a line of elevated terrain[?] which forms a border between two drainage basins such that water falling on one side of the line eventually travels to one ocean, and water on the other side travels to another, generally on the opposite side of the continent. Since the exact border between oceans is usually not clearly defined, the continental divide is not always definite for any continent. For instance, North America has a clear continental divide in the Rocky Mountains along most of its length, draining into the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, while Australia has less distinct ocean boundaries around it, and less prominent mountain ranges, making it hard to define a single divide.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Digital Rights Management

... DRM, is an umbrella term for any of several arrangements by which the usage of copyrighted data by someone who has purchased a copy of it may be restricted by the ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 42.1 ms