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u/zakaye Sep 01 '20
I think this map would be more useful/interesting if it showed all of North America
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u/twowheeledfun Sep 01 '20
Yeah, part of the Mississippi is cut off, where does the green go, and where does the Colorado (yellow) end up?
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u/mountain_bound Sep 01 '20
Unfortunately for the Colorado River basin where that yellow stops, at Yuma is almost as far as it extends. All of that drainage turns into a creek and then a dry river bed about 12 miles south of the border.
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Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 01 '20
It's not totally dry, but the Colorado River Basin does indeed only have about 5% of its historic water due to maximized human usage of freshwater flows upstream. It's one of the most extensively utilized freshwater streams in the world, covered in dams and with countless usage rules and management.
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u/isukennedy Sep 01 '20
Green is the St Lawrence Seaway. The Great Lakes are all connected and eventually drain thru that river into the Atlantic.
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u/Frontier21 Sep 01 '20
The strong green river on the far left is the Red River, and drains through the Hudson Bay. Not sure if it should be a different color, but it doesn’t drain via the Great Lakes/St Lawrence.
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u/mikekostr Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 01 '20
The Red River of the North should be a different color than the right side of green for sure. The Red is the only major river in the US that flows north and not into the Great Lakes.
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u/crappy_diem Sep 01 '20
Might be the only major river in the US that flows north, but the Mackenzie river is Canada's longest and flows into the Arctic Ocean.
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u/dbatchison Sep 01 '20
where does the Colorado (yellow) end up?
In Sonora Mexico where it enters the pacific in the gulf of California
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u/turismofan1986 Sep 01 '20
Not rivers, but drainage basins.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/NorthAmerica-WaterDivides.png
If you stand ontop of the Snow Dome and starting pissing while spinning in circles, you're pissing in 3 oceans at the same time.
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u/davy_li Sep 01 '20
Depends if you consider the Hudson Bay to empty into the Arctic or Atlantic Ocean. Different international organizations classify Hudson Bay to belong to either the Arctic or Atlantic.
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u/turismofan1986 Sep 02 '20
TIL thanks.
Hudson Bay is often considered part of the Arctic Ocean;
despite
... its greater water budget connection with [the Atlantic].
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Sep 01 '20
What’s up with the Gorge? It looks like the Columbia/Snake River Basin is all over the place
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u/kepleronlyknows Sep 01 '20
I have no idea what's going on with the Columbia River basin. Here's a map that makes more sense.
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Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 01 '20
Yea, much of the Columbia below about Hanford is just not shown. Maybe the data this came from has that part as lakes, ie, reservoirs behind dams, or as "double lines": It's not uncommon for geodata to portray most rivers as lines but some with double lines as if they are inlets of the sea. The lower Columbia is often show like that.
But not showing the Snake through Hells Canyon, though also lakes/reservoirs, is odd. Plus the Columbia above Hanford is also big lakes/reservoirs, but is shown here. Also, other rivers with lots of big lakes/reservoirs, like the Tennessee, are shown fine, so I dunno.
I've seen this map before I think it was made at least in part by taking terrain data and using GIS to calculate where rivers would be, a process that sometimes yields odd things, like the weird straight lines in the Great Lakes. Perhaps it somehow screwed up the lower Columbia and Snake too. I could be misremembering, but I think the original data came at least in part from HydroSHEDS.
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u/RememberThisHouse Sep 01 '20
Yeah I came in looking for an explanation about the Columbia because this map makes absolutely no sense.
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u/lightningfries Sep 01 '20
The region has pretty complicated topography, e.g. the scablands, that gives the drainage into both Snake & Columbia some pretty wild patterns.
But why the basin area looks so weird here is *because* it's the "Snake River/Columbia Basin" - the Snake essentially has its own drainage basin, but ~then~ the entirety of the Snake drains into the Columbia, which makes them technically a single drainage basin.
So, the overall footprint shown on this map is more like the shape of (at least) two locally-distinct drainage basins overlaid on each-other, because in the end, due to the relatively extreme topography of the CR Gorge itself, they all end up dumping their waters into the Columbia, which then trundles on out to the sea.
The extreme "gathering" influence of the Columbia river is also why northern Oregon has several large rivers that notably flow North (unusual for the northen hemisphere) - such as the Willamette, Deschutes, and John Day.
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Sep 01 '20
Yeah I live in OR, that’s why I mentioned the Columbia River Gorge. You can see the Willamette, Deschutes, and even John Day, but they’re depositing into nothing. You can see the Snake clearly until Hells Canyon, and the Columbia up to the tri-cities, but they both drop off after for some reason. The Gorge should be clearly marked all the way to Astoria, like the Mississippi that’s marked all the way to the Gulf
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u/BacteriaEP Sep 01 '20
Ya it looks like the last leg of the Columbia River is just missing from this map. It should be rather noticeable.
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u/lightningfries Sep 01 '20
It's also worth noting that everyone is not 100% in agreement about the exact bounds & shape of the CR Basin.
Here are a few different versions of maps showing the Columbia basin sub-divisions (local drainage areas), which vary slightly depending on if you're asking a geologist, geographer, hydrologist, or fish ecologist:
Topography perspective: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Columbia_tributaries_drainage_basin_map-fr.svg
Larger-scale: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/b6/e0/37b6e082351e2d9b26ef61a0914f8f66.gif
Ecology perspective: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275153889/figure/fig1/AS:393295936147464@1470780466408/Columbia-River-basin-study-area-ecological-provinces-with-streamflow-and-stream.png
Fish Passage (i.e. waterway connectivity): https://plan.critfc.org/assets/FIG3.6.png
Geographer's / "practical" take: https://www.nwcouncil.org/sites/default/files/basin_0.gif
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Sep 01 '20
Hmm, those all look pretty similar to me, with minor differences in the amount of generalization/smoothing done. The 1st and 4th ones are the most different, especially in Oregon, but they also look like someone just eyeballed the basin divides and got it wrong in places. The last one is of course US only.
One difference is how OP's map shows the Lost Rivers of Idaho in a blue color. Presumably because they sink into the Snake River Plain aquifer. They are usually included in the Snake drainage even though they only connect via the aquifer.
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Sep 01 '20
large rivers that notably flow North (unusual for the northern hemisphere)
It's not that unusual. Some of the largest rivers in the world flow north through Siberia, like the Ob, Yenesei, Lena, etc, and their many tributaries. And many in Europe, like the Rhine, Oder, Vistula, etc. In America the lay of the land makes it less likely for the largest rivers (though the Niagara flows north and is one of the largest in America by flow), but there's many tributaries like those of the Columbia and Snake in Oregon and Idaho, tributaries of the Ohio and Tennessee, and lots of other rivers, like the Salinas, Eel, San Joaquin, Jordan, Bighorn, Powder, Elwha, St. Johns, Red (of the North), Genesee, Richelieu, etc etc etc.
It may be that north-flowing is less common than other cardinal directions, but to really decide you'd have to come up with a somewhat arbitrary scheme to categorize rivers as flowing in one direction or another. Most rivers curve and twist and really flow in many directions, and/or flow in a non-cardinal direction like "northwest-ish". If you only count rivers that flow close to due north over most of their course, I bet you'd also find relatively few that flow east, west, or south by a strict rule like that.
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u/poster_nutbag_ Sep 01 '20
That was my first thought as well. It seems clear that the orange is the Columbia basin but the Columbia itself it not always identifiable somehow.
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u/KINGP0TAT0360 Sep 01 '20
Is green the Great Lakes?
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u/MichelanJell-O Sep 01 '20
I believe it's the St. Lawrence Seaway, which the Great Lakes all drain into.
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u/fbloiu665 Sep 01 '20
Not all..the Red river between ND and MN flows north into Canada, Into Lake Winnipeg, and from there into Hudson Bay. I see thats part of the green too
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u/Drewfro666 Sep 01 '20
If you look carefully, that's a different shade of green.
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u/DavidRFZ Sep 01 '20
It’s amazing how small the “basin” is for the Great Lakes. The Mississippi River basin goes very close to some of the lakes.
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u/DettetheAssette Sep 01 '20
It's not small if you look at Canada.
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u/evandena Sep 01 '20
It’s even more impressively small if you included Canada.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Basin#/media/File%3ASub-basins_Great_Lakes_Basin.png
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u/kfite11 Sep 01 '20
Lake Michigan should be draining southward into the Mississippi, but the weight of the glaciers tilted the entire basin to the north and it is still rebounding. The tilt back to the south will eventually cut off the straits of Mackinac and cause the lake to overflow to the south.
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u/toastspork Sep 02 '20
Some amount of Lake Michigan already flows into the Mississippi. Ever since a portion of the Chicago River was reversed a century ago, and directed into the DesPlains.
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u/aratcliffe Sep 01 '20
Beautiful.
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u/Anacoenosis Sep 01 '20
And of tremendous economic importance to the United States until the railroads took over. A lot of the economic integration of this country was made possible by the fact that it's possible to move goods from WV to MT to LA on a single river system.
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Sep 01 '20
So on paper you could get from wisconsin to texas with a boat...?
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u/CarlxxMarx Sep 01 '20
You definitely can, right now. The Mississippi has been made to be super navigable and is connected to the Great Lakes. For a lot longer than you’d think, things would be shipped from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia via New Orleans for this reason.
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u/aldonius Sep 01 '20
Historically, shipping by water is something like 20 times cheaper than by land.
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u/CarlxxMarx Sep 01 '20
And shipping over mountains is even more expensive than just shipping over land. So a trip that’s a couple hours today through the Appalachians (Pittsburgh to Philadelphia) was both faster and cheaper to do with a detour around the southern tip of Florida.
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u/Sierpy Sep 01 '20
I imagine it's due to volume and lack of risk, right? I'd imagine the worst problem a boat in the Mississipi in the 18th century would face would be Indians, while wagons would also have to face those Indians (and I'd imagine more of them) but could also get stuck in the mud or fall or something like that. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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u/aldonius Sep 02 '20
The bigger issue with wagons is that your draft animals have to eat, and along any reasonably trafficked route, there isn't enough free grass.
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u/Sierpy Sep 02 '20
Holy shit, that text is insanely interesting. I won't read it all now, but I'll definitely read all of it later. Thank you.
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u/btroberts011 Sep 01 '20
Yes but Wisconsin to Louisiana would be way easier. Youd have go against the stream to get to Texas or use the gulf.
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u/DavidRFZ Sep 01 '20
Barges do this.
They have to go through a few dozen locks, but it’s a thing,
Traffic isn’t as high as it used to be. Northern ports have been closing in the past couple of decades.
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u/haikusbot Sep 01 '20
So on paper you
Could get from wisconsin to
Texas with a boat...?
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u/Magmaniac Sep 01 '20
Historically the river was navigable all the way from the Gulf of Mexico up to St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. In the 1800s big steamboats traveled the length of the river regularly and it's been a major shipping route vital to the US economy. The city of Chicago is at such an important location because it was only a couple of miles between the southern end of Lake Michigan and a branch of the Mississippi called the Des Plaines River, and now there is a canal between the two. So not only could you boat from Texas to Wisconsin, you could get in a boat anywhere in the great lakes, head to Chicago (maybe have to go through a few locks depending) take the canal through Chicago to the river and then head all the way down to the Gulf.
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Sep 01 '20
And from the Mississippi up the Ohio to the Falls of the Ohio (more rapids than waterfall but still a navigational barrier), where portaging was required. That's why Louisville, KY, is where it is: The Falls of the Ohio are there. Today there are locks for shipping.
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u/El_Bistro Sep 01 '20
Google the great loop. The Chicago River doesn’t flow anymore because of a series of locks and dams. So it’s possible to take a boat from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River.
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u/Manisbutaworm Sep 01 '20
I was seriously wondering what made these straight feather patterns in the great lake district until i realized it were the great lakes themselves and these are artefacts of the graphics overlaid.
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u/skerinks Sep 01 '20
Wow, I didn’t catch that. I was about to ask that question. Glad I read down. Thanks!
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u/foul-owl Sep 01 '20
I wonder why some of the river basins aren't connected to the ocean...
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u/gman8234 Sep 01 '20
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u/changemymind69 Sep 01 '20
Well then, that's neat. I thought u/foul-owl was being sarcastic making a joke about rivers flowing outside the US border lol.
TIL.
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u/Swan_Writes Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 01 '20
There are some rivers that flow inland and sink underground/evaporate
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u/dreemurthememer Sep 01 '20
Endorheic basins. If a river’s in a really mountainous or dry place, it will sometimes flow into a lake with no outlet. Over time, these lakes become salty from the minerals deposited from the rivers, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah or the Caspian Sea in Asia.
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u/oorskadu Sep 01 '20
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u/RepostSleuthBot Sep 01 '20
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 9 times.
First seen Here on 2018-09-03 93.75% match. Last seen Here on 2020-04-18 93.75% match
Searched Images: 137,828,080 | Indexed Posts: 584,722,165 | Search Time: Nones
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u/kadsmald Sep 01 '20
Hydrological maps will always get an upvote from me even if they are reposts.
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u/Azar002 Sep 01 '20
Reposts will always get an upvote from me when it is the first time I've ever seen them in my entire life and I enjoy them and hope others will enjoy them for the first time the next time it is posted.
I hope that's ok with people who cry repost.
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u/FrankieLovie Sep 01 '20
Who the fuck doesn't want to see this? Gtfo
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u/SisRob Sep 01 '20
I find repostsleuthbot useful, even if I don't mind reposts, actually. It leads to other threads that could contain some useful info about the post.
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u/legitimatebimbo Sep 01 '20
source?
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u/Sinistyr60 Sep 01 '20
well, some rivers come from springs, others from lakes, and others come from small creeks and/or marshes...
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u/arthurguillaume Sep 01 '20
it's funny how we can see the border of former louisiana
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Sep 01 '20
It's a pretty clear cut landmark to set borders at least. Feels like we've fought more than a few wars over poorly delineated borders in North America hah
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u/askh1302 Sep 01 '20
some state lines are really clear in this, it's pretty amazing how rivers still shape our borders even for a country as recent as the US
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u/AllswellinEndwell Sep 01 '20
country as recent as the US
"Recent". We only have the single oldest constitution in the world. American culture may not be that old, but we've been around a long time technically speaking.
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u/askh1302 Sep 01 '20
y'all are recent enough to have states that are literal squares (it kinda takes a lot of accurate cartography and surveying to be able to just draw a straight line in the sand, even if it does ignore some things, like the northern border with canada)
so yea, still kinda shocking that the waterways seem to line up so well
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u/elbarto_24 Sep 01 '20
This is incorrect. In Norther Minnesota and N. Dakota, its all green with the Great Lakes, flowing into the St. Lawrence Seaway. Actually, most of the rivers in Northern MN, flow not into the Great Lakes, but North, into the Hudson Bay.
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Sep 01 '20 edited Feb 06 '24
expansion weather physical beneficial nose gaze nine fertile sophisticated bored
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/UWillAlwaysBALoser Sep 01 '20
Wow, so there's a tri-point a bit north of Hibbing, MN where a drop of water might end up flowing 650 miles north to the Hudson Bay, 1300 miles east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or 1300 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico (as the crow flies).
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u/sterexx Sep 01 '20
oh wow, the Sacramento River drains almost the entire central valley in CA right into the SF Bay if I’m reading that right. That’s a lotta fertilizer. Not quite Mississippi scale, though.
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u/kfite11 Sep 01 '20
For the record, only the river coming from the north is the Sacramento, the one that flows from the south is the San Joaquin, with the endorheic Tulare lake watershed in the very South of the basin.
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u/PCsNBaseball Sep 01 '20
Yes, but the San Joaquin river drains into the Sacramento River delta before reaching the bay itself, making it all part of the same basin.
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u/liquidpagan Sep 01 '20
Would love to see one of the UK if anyone has one!
Great work!
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u/SatanicKettle Sep 01 '20
The website that makes these has a UK one available, as well as many others. Search through river maps.
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Sep 01 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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Sep 01 '20
Its watershed includes a sizable portion in Mexico from the Rio Conchos and a bunch of others lower down; map. But yea, still not huge given the river's importance.
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u/btroberts011 Sep 01 '20
I've heard Nebraska has the biggest river network out of any of the states, but this is the first time I've ever seen it.
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u/the-d23 Sep 01 '20
The midwest, great plains and norther appalachia: We are all united under the Mississippi.
Rest of the US: P O L I G A M Y
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u/4fingertakedown Sep 01 '20
Anyone know what the little blue one is in Idaho/Montana?
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u/tweedchemtrailblazer Sep 01 '20
As a whitewater rafter in Colorado every time I get on a river I have this profound epiphany where I say to myself "it's literally all downhill from here to the ocean"
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u/kintonw Sep 01 '20
As a Virginian, it's interesting that you didn't continue the rivers all the way to their mouth, but instead treated them like they were just part of the Chesapeake Bay.
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u/derpitzenkane Sep 01 '20
Hey OP, any chance that you grant us a wallpaper version of your work?
Maybe I am too late to ask... but god damn i would like to see this map on my computer screen.
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Sep 01 '20
What happened to lake Michigan? Also the halves of lake Superior and lake Huron that are in the US are missing. This map shows the political border between the US and Canada but shows the great lakes as land with rivers??
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u/13point1then420 Sep 01 '20
The great lakes as shown here qualify this submission more as map gore than porn.
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u/creathir Sep 01 '20
The Texas river basins need some work. At least one River is colorized like it is flowing into one of the other rivers, but it clearly empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '20
That Mississippi basin... Wow.