The list of drainage basins by area identifies areas larger than 400,000 km2 (150,000 sq mi), sorted by area, which drain to oceans, mediterranean seas, rivers, lakes and other waterbodies. It includes drainage basins which do not flow to the ocean (endorheic basins). It includes oceanic sea drainage basins which have hydrologically coherent areas (oceanic seas are set by IHO convention).
The oceans drain approximately 83% of the land in the world. The other 17% – an area larger than the basin of the Arctic Ocean – drains to internal endorheic basins.
Note that there are substantial areas of the world that do not "drain" in the commonly understood sense. In Arctic deserts much of the snowfall sublimates directly into the air and does not melt into flowing water, while in equatorial deserts precipitation may evaporate before joining any substantial water course. However, these areas can still be included in topographically defined basins if one considers the hypothetical flow of water (or ice), and thus nutrients or pollutants, over the surface of the ground (or ice sheet); this is the approach taken here. For example, the Antarctic ice sheet can be divided into basins, and most of Libya is included the Mediterranean Sea basin even though almost no water from the interior actually reaches the sea.
Read more about List Of Drainage Basins By Area: Basins
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list and/or area:
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)