Tributary - Ordering and Enumeration

Ordering and Enumeration

Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river and ending with those to those nearest to the mouth of the river. The Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third, and higher orders, with the first order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second order tributary would be the result of two or more first order tributaries combining to form the second order tributary.

Another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure.