All the Rivers & Streams in the U.S. Shown in Rainbow Colors: A Data Visualization to Behold

This is a sight for sore eyes. Cre­at­ed by Hun­gar­i­an geo­g­ra­ph­er and map-design­er Robert Szucs, using open-source QGIS soft­ware, the high res­o­lu­tion map above shows:

all the per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary streams and rivers of the con­tigu­ous 48 states in beau­ti­ful rain­bow colours, divid­ed into catch­ment areas. It shows Strahler Stream Order Clas­si­fi­ca­tion. The high­er the stream order, the thick­er the line.

When you look at the map, you’ll see, as The Wash­ing­ton Post observes, “Every riv­er in a col­or drains to the same riv­er, which then drains into the ocean. The giant basin in the mid­dle of the coun­try is the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er basin. Major rivers like the Ohio and the Mis­souri drain into the behe­moth.” Pret­ty impres­sive.

The map was appar­ent­ly made using data from the Euro­pean Envi­ron­ment Agency and the Rivers Net­work Sys­tem.

You can find the map on Imgur, or pur­chase “ultra high” res­o­lu­tion copies through Etsy for $8.

Szucs has als0 pro­duced data visu­al­iza­tions of the riv­er sys­tems in Chi­na, India, Europe and oth­er parts of the world.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

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Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

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