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Imgur user shows map of every river basin in the US


Stashed in: Awesome, America!, Maps!, Etsy

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These truly are the veins and arteries of our continent.

Beautiful AND informative.

Created by Imgur user Fejetlenfej, a geographer and GIS analyst with a ‘lifelong passion for beautiful maps,’ it highlights the massive expanse of river basins across the country – in particular, those which feed the Mississippi River.

The map visualizes Strahler Stream Order Classification, the creator explains, with higher stream orders indicated as thicker lines. 

It was created using the open-source QGIS software, and the high resolution prints are available on Etsy

There are 18 major river basins in the 48 states of the contiguous US, but much of the map is dominated by the massive catchment area for the Mississippi River, including the Upper and Lower Mississippi River Basins, along with Missouri River Basin and the Arkansas-White-Red Basin, as seen in pink.

The top left portion of the map shows much of the Pacific Northwest basin, illustrated in a brownish-orange color.

And, the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins stand out as well, in bright yellow.

Every river basin in the CONTIGUOUS US. Can't speak for Hawaii but Alaska has some damn majestic rivers too. Speaking of which, I was very surprised to see how... not-very-majestic the Columbia River looks on here.

Yeah the Columbia is much less significant than I realized.

I'm not sure Hawaii has any rivers.

The full map:

Rivers basins of the US in rainbow colours - Album on Imgur

Source and Imgur comments: http://imgur.com/gallery/N4cUA

Neat how natural systems for moving/filtering lots of stuff have the same fractal shape...

lung fractal

Wow that is a great comparison.

Must flow naturally from a universe with laws like ours.

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