In terrain with some topographic relief a DEM can be used to estimate the position and relative volume of streams under the principal that all streams flow downhill.
STEP 1. Get SRTM data online.
Download the tiles in Arc/Info ASCII if possible, or use HGT or BIL format. DTED is a little more difficult to work with.
SRTM data in 3 arc sec (90m) resolution can be found in either 'research' or 'finished' grade http://SRTM.USGS.GOV (Thanks to NASA and the USGS)
'Finished' grade SRTM data is now available to the public. Finished grade has speckling holes filled and (significantly, for hydrology studies) it has larger rivers "burned in" to the SRTM.
In this exercise we will learn how to create a polygon shapefile by digitizing the polygon from an satellite image of the pyramids of Giza.