A clever means of categorizing the size of rivers. It does this by looking at joins of tributaries. Each time two tributaries of the same order join together then the river goes up in order. So the start of a stream from a spring is the outermost branch — first order. When two first orders join together, the river is classified as second order and so on.

The largest river by Strahler stream order classification is the Amazon at twelfth order. This means that at least two order 11 rivers had to merge together before the river emptied into the sea.

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