ABSTRACT
The way water moves across and through a landscape is very important for determining river flow, water quality, and even the evolution of landscapes themselves. It is common to try to understand water movements across landscapes within topographically confined units. We call these units river basins (also known as water - sheds or catchments), which are defined by the upslope area draining into a given point on a river. These can vary in scale from hillslopes to the size of the Amazon basin at 6 160 000 km2. While the Amazon’s seemingly vast river basin area amounts to only 2% of the Earth’s land mass, the Amazon carries around one-fifth of the world’s annual river discharge because the
majority of its area rests in a tropical region with plentiful rainfall.
