These are the symbols used to identify water features on a 1:50 000 OS map. Looking at the OS map of the Swords area on page 96, see how many of these features you can find on it.
Drainage
Drainage refers to the way that water flows on the land’s surface. It relates to rivers, lakes and marshes.
OS maps sometimes allow us to identify places that are well-drained as well as places that are poorly drained or flooded/likely to flood. There are a number of ways to identify each type of area.
A well-drained area will have:
Very few areas of surface water. A river is the only example in this map segment.
There are also examples of settlement and roads in this map, despite the river. We can take this to mean that the river does not flood and will not disrupt the area.
