Method & sources

About

I'm a developer, not a cartographer. These maps are a personal project. I made the first one because I wanted a poster of the streams around Bellingham, where I live. Once the process worked for one place, I pointed it at a few more.

Each map starts as public data: stream networks, water bodies, elevation, and gauge readings from agencies like the USGS, state ecology departments, and their Canadian counterparts. Scripts on my laptop download it, clean it up, and size every stream on the page to its typical flow. The same process runs unchanged from Whatcom County to Texas Hill Country. I've done my best to keep each result honest to its sources.

None of this exists without the people who measure and publish that data in the first place: USGS gage keepers, state and provincial ecology departments, city and county GIS staff, and their Canadian counterparts at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Their fieldwork and upkeep are the real work here. I just draw the pictures.

Inspired by Matthew Heberger's American Rivers: A Graphic (Pacific Institute, 2013)