ALL the Rivers in the United States on a Single Beautiful Interactive Map!

A recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that 55 percent of U.S. rivers and streams are in poor condition. Most of us don't go to that many different rivers in our lives, so when we see a number like that we might not realize just how many rivers and streams there are in the United States. Well, the map above gives you an idea of how many there are. Keep going to the next slides to see many beautiful different visualizations of rivers in the U.S., as well as an interactive map that you can play with and zoom in and out of to see the rivers in your area. All river data comes from the NHDPlus dataset, a geo-spatial, hydrologic framework dataset envisioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Here's a different version of the zoomed out map showing the whole US, with only major rivers. Now let's zoom back in...

Here's the South-East, with Florida being obviously less well endowed in rivers than the rest. The rivers give a pretty good idea of what the 3D terrain looks like, since water flows downhill and streams join together at lower elevations to form bigger rivers.

Here's the North-East. Notice the shape of the Great Lakes, and just how dense the river network is.

California and the West!

Here's a zoomed-in view of the San Francisco Bay from the interactive map.

Here's part of the Gulf of Mexico coast, with an incredible network zig-zagging northward.

Some of the most beautiful areas look almost like frame-frozen lighting strikes. There's an electric quality to these images, in my opinion. Very pretty!

You can go play with the interactive map here to find your area. For the computer geeks, there's the code available here. And the back-story can be found on Nelson Minar's site.