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  • Review Article
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Drainage divide migration and implications for climate and biodiversity

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 5, pages 177–192 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Drainage divides separate Earth’s surface into individual river basins. Divide migration impacts the evolution of landforms, regional climate, ecosystems and biodiversity. In this Review, we assess the processes and dynamics of divide migration and offer insights into the impact on climate and biodiversity. Drainage divides are not static: they can move through the processes of gradual migration that is continuous in unsteady landscapes, or sudden through infrequent river capture events. Divides tend to move in the direction of slower erosion, faster uplift or with horizontal tectonic advection, with rates typically ranging between 0.001 and 10 mm year−1, and a global average of 0.6 mm year−1. Evidence of river capture, such as a sharp change in flow direction with an upstream waterfall, can constrain divide migration history. Topographic metrics, such as cross-divide steepness, can predict the migration of drainage divides towards directions with a lower topographic steepness. Divide migration influences the spatial distribution of regional precipitation, temperature and topographic connectivity between species, thereby affecting biodiversity. For example, freshwater fish can migrate into a new drainage basin through river capture, potentially increasing the species richness. Future research should couple advanced landscape evolution models and observations from field and remote sensing to better investigate divide migration dynamics.

Key points

  • Drainage divides can move through gradual migration and occasional river capture. Drainage divides tend to move in the direction of slower erosion, faster uplift or with horizontal tectonic advection.

  • Tectonics and erosion jointly influence divide dynamics and mountain asymmetry. Mountain asymmetry can increase with tectonic convergence velocity, whereas climate can both increase and decrease mountain asymmetry.

  • Evidence of river capture can decode divide motion history. Cross-divide steepness metrics and χ-value (drainage-area normalized distance along a river channel) can predict short-term and long-term divide stability, respectively.

  • Main drainage divide position of mountains affects spatial patterns of rainfall via orographic effect and temperature through altitude–temperature relationship, thereby influencing the richness and type of species.

  • River capture events can promote species richness in expanding basins, but they can decrease biodiversity in shrinking catchments. However, overall diversity tends to increase owing to vicariant speciation in expanding catchments.

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Fig. 1: Drainage divides across scales.
Fig. 2: The processes of gradual divide migration and river capture.
Fig. 3: Drivers of drainage divide motion.
Fig. 4: Stable position and migration rate of drainage divides.
Fig. 5: Methods of judging divide migration direction.
Fig. 6: Effects of drainage divides on climate and biodiversity.

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Data availability

The locations of the natural examples on Earth and Mars (Google Earth files), as well as the raw data for Figs. 4d, 5b and 6, and Supplementary Figs. 2, 5 and 7, are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21952820.v11.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank W. Schwanghart, M. F. Stokes and A. M. Forte for sharing the original data. The authors express their sincere gratitude to J. Turowski, E. Deal, L. Gourbet, H. Davies and A. Wild for their suggestions on the previous versions of this manuscript. The authors thank Y. Y. Wang and T. Ehlers for the discussions. Special thanks are extended to L. Becker for improving the English of the manuscript. C.H. acknowledges support from NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China) (grant 42201008), Helmholtz-OCPC Postdoc Program, and the Expedition Funding from German Research Centre for Geosciences (grant XP235501). J.B. and E.A-T. are supported by the German Research Foundation (grant 268236062) as part of the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Earth evolution at the dry limit’ (CRC-1211). X.Y. acknowledges funding from NSFC (grant 42272261).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany

    Chuanqi He, Jean Braun, Hui Tang, Esteban Acevedo-Trejos & Richard F. Ott

  2. School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China

    Chuanqi He & Xiaoping Yuan

  3. Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Chuanqi He & Gaia Stucky de Quay

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C.H. wrote the first draft and made the figures. All authors contributed to the conceptualization, discussion, data collection and editing of all manuscript components.

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Glossary

Base level

The regional lowest point above which a river can erode its channel, such as the ocean or a lake.

Biodiversity

The variety of lifeforms, including their genetic, phenotypic, functional, taxonomic and ecological variation in space and time.

Catchments

Geographical areas where surface water flows and converges into common drainage points.

Digital twin

A digital model that uses real-time data and simulation to replicate the behaviour of a physical system or process, enabling optimization and predictive maintenance.

Expanding catchment

Catchment that gains drainage area from their neighbours during divide migration.

Hillslopes

The sloping surfaces of hills located between river channels and drainage divides.

Horizontal tectonic advection

The movement of topography in a horizontal direction induced by tectonic deformation.

Impact crater rim

A raised boundary encircling an impact crater, often functioning as a drainage divide.

Knickpoint

A sharp change in the slope of river profile, such as a waterfall.

Main drainage divide

A drainage divide that separates multiple drainage basins.

Rift margin escarpments

Cliffs formed along the edge of rift valleys where the Earth’s crust pulls apart.

Shrinking catchment

Catchment that loses drainage area during divide migration.

Thermochronology

A geological dating technique that determines the temperature history of rocks, revealing the timing of tectonic and erosional events.

Wind gap

A drainage divide through which a waterway once flowed but is now dry owing to river capture.

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He, C., Braun, J., Tang, H. et al. Drainage divide migration and implications for climate and biodiversity. Nat Rev Earth Environ 5, 177–192 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00511-z

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