To my understanding, a river’s source is fueled by snow and rain, but is it enough to keep it running for that long? Afterall the source doesn’t get rain/snow 24/7 so wouldn’t bigger rivers drain the source in a matter of weeks instead of many hundreds of years?
In: Planetary Science
Let’s say the total amount of water in all the rivers in the world is *r* liters.
Icy Mountains have 4*r* liters. (Note: I’m not including Antarctic, Greenland and Arctic Islands because those places have very low demographic density and are not fueling rivers for like 99% of humankind).
Swamps have 6*r* liters.
The atmosphere have 7*r* liters.
The fresh water lakes have 45*r* liters.
The non-saline groundwater have 5000*r* liters.
Everything above is what ends up sending water to rivers. It is easy to see that the rivers don’t dry as the water fueling those rivers is in many orders of magnitude higher. A river loses water to either the soil or the air, both which will end up using this water to refuel the river.
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