The Status of Drainage Basin Studies in Geomorphology

Olav Slaymaker
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
olav@geog.ubc.ca

The unifying feature of drainage basin studies is the integration of slope and channel processes, an objective long held to be the most basic challenge in our field (e.g. Leopold, Wolman and Miller 1964). Distinctive approaches are:

• drainage basin geometry from digital terrain models;
• drainage basin long-term evolution, using kinematic models;
• erosion surface and sediment storage histories with geochronological controls;
• mass balance frameworks using conservation of mass models;
• process-response frameworks exploiting dynamic models;
• managerialist frameworks, emphasising conceptual and simulation models;
• ecological frameworks, incorporating adaptive and mitigative models;
• social frameworks, using institutional and political models.

The eight approaches are grouped into four categories, defined by preferred time and space scales. Three questions are posed:

• from theoretical considerations, can these preferred time and space scales be justified?;
• from the literature, how have these preferred time and scales varied since 1945? and
• from societal relevance considerations, how far along this spectrum of approaches should geomorphologists concentrate their efforts?