Drainage Basin in our Daily Life

Well drainage basins are very commonly found in our daily life. It is easier to find a drainage basin in an urban city like Singapore. Many drainage basin systems are built to prevent flooding. The one below is one I found near my house.

Contour line diagram of the drainage system (numbers are in cm)

Picture of the Drainage basin

When precipitation occurs water gets intercepted by the grass and other vegetation such as the mimosa. Some water gets infiltrated and through throughflow and baseflow water from zone of aeration and zone of saturation flows into a nearby reservoir. Some of the precipitation falls directly into channel storage (drain) and flow through channel flow into the underground water storage. Water that does not get infiltrated through surface runoff enters the channel storage and from there it flows (channel flow) into a reservoir nearby .Some of the water that are trapped in vegetation are lost through evaporation or transpiration. Some water enters the soil through stemflow .Therefore through this we can observe that by allowing nature and technology to work together flooding could be prevented.

Inputs: precipitation

Output: Reservoir, Evaporation, Transpiration

Through this the equation P=Q+E+S is balanced

Enjoy your weekend!!!

Hari Haran