European Watershed
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The European Watershed is the line which divides the drainage basins of the major rivers of Germany: the Rhine, which originates in the Swiss Alps and empties into the North Sea via the Netherlands, and the Danube, which originates in the Black Forest and flows eastward emptying into the Black Sea.
The watershed is not a clearly defined divide. Tectonics, especially in the area that is now the Upper Rhine Plain, created River Rhine. As its headward erosion is much stronger than that of the much older River Danube (see the upper river geology) (due to the Rhine’s gravity[clarification needed] on its much shorter way to the North Sea), the Rhine and its tributaries intrude deeper into phreatic zones of the Swabian Karst and even capture the upper Danube and its surface tributaries.
It is expected that the Danube's upper course will one day disappear entirely in favour of the Rhine ("stream capture").
