Tributary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A tributary (or confluent/affluent) is a stream or river which flows into another river (a parent river) or body of water but which may not flow directly into the sea. In orography, tributaries are ordered from those nearest to the source of the river to those nearest to the mouth of the river. A confluence is where two or more tributaries or rivers flow together.
The descriptive terms right tributary and left tributary always apply from the perspective of looking downstream (in the direction the current is going), similarly to the river banks.
The opposite of a tributary is a distributary; a river branch that flows away from the main stream. A river and all its tributaries drain the watershed of the river.
Network analysis examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. orders.
