River capture

Also called stream piracy. The rivers in neighbouring drainage basin have different erosion velocity. For rivers with faster velocity, the spreading velocity from source to the watershed is faster, and finally the watershed is cut through, which leads to the upstream of the river on the other side of watershed to pour into this river and become the tributary of this river. This is called river capture. River capture is a phenomenon of development of river system.

After river capture, the river capturing water is called capturing river and the river being captured is called captured river. The downstream of the captured river is called beheaded river because the source is cut off due to route change of the upstream.