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[Dunamisdeos]

In relation to my current engineering project, do rivers work like aquifiers in that you can drain water into them?

[Urist Da Vinci]

Nope. Any aquifer tile can create or destroy water to maintain a certain water level, but for rivers water is only created at the upstream end at the edge of the map. Water will still flow off map edges as normal.

If you drain water into an aquifer, it may disappear quickly to instantly. If you drain water into a river, you will likely overflow the river bank.

[sal880612m]

Rivers contain an unlimited amount of water and cannot be drained like muddy pools. They can, however, be dammed if you can temporarily drain part of them to 1/7 or less for long enough to construct walls or install floodgates. Despite being an unlimited source of water, river source tiles will only refill up to the level of the river's source - it will not overflow if you dam it up. This video demonstrates one way to drain and dam a river: ^[1]. Another way to dam a river is to direct lava into it, producing obsidian in the squares where it encounters water.

This is from the wiki

Edit: I drained a river/brook once as close to the upstream source as I could and the entire river did empty, whether this is a result of it flowing off screen at the downstream end or drying up it should be possible to draining any finite amount of water into a river if you are willing to take the time to do so in steps.

[Dunamisdeos]

Interesting! Thanks for the help!

[GavJ]

Yes it should absorb infinite amounts of water. Not because it's magic, but because that's the same exact thing a manmade river going to the edge of the map would do. The normal water pressure mechanics just cause any water falling onto the 7/7 river to teleport off the side of the map, basically, if the river is full all the way to the edge. And if it's not full, well then there's room in it for the water you're adding!

In other words, AFAIK it's not possible to overflow a river's banks without first actually damming it. I have tried pretty hard (unintentionally) before and it didn't happen.