that efficiently carry water through the catchment. Labeling these features as “channels” rather than “streams” indicates that there need not be a continuous flow of water to capture the behavior of this region as a conduit of water. According to Arthur Strahler’s stream ordering system, the channels are not defined to be any single order or range of orders. Channels of lower orders combine to form higher order channels. The associated hillslope areas are the hillslopes that slope directly into the channels. Precipitation that enters the system on the hillslopes areas and is not lost to infiltration or evapotranspiration enters the channels. The source areas are concave regions of hillslope that are associated with a single channel. Precipitation entering a source area that is not lost to infiltration or evapotranspiration flows through the source area and enters the channel at the channel’s head. Source areas and the hillslope areas associated with channels are differentiated by source areas draining through the channel head, while the associated hillslope areas drain into the rest of the stream. According to Strahler’s stream ordering system, all source areas drain into a primary channel, by the definition of a primary channel. Bras et al. (1991) describe the conditions that are necessary for channel formation. Channel formation is a concept intimately tied to the formation and evolution of a drainage system and influence the drainage density of catchment. The relation they propose determines the behavior of a given hillslope in response to a small perturbation. They propose the following equation as a relation between source area, source slope, and the sediment flux through this source area: Where F is the sediment flux, S is the slope of the source area, and a is the source area. The right-hand side of this relation determines channel stability or instability. If the right-hand side of the equation is greater than zero, the hillslope is stable, and small perturbations such as small erosive events do no develop into channels. Conversely, if the right-hand side of the equation is less than zero, Bras et al. determine the hillslope to be unstable, and small erosive structures, such as rills, will tend to grow and form a channel and increase the drainage density of a basin. In this sense, "unstable" is not used in the sense of the gradient of the hillslope being greater than the angle of repose and therefore susceptible to mass