Water science news, explainers, and statistics covering freshwater, hydrology, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice, and Earth’s connected water systems.
A map of New Mexico lakes is largely a map of reservoirs. The state’s most prominent open-water destinations include Elephant Butte, Navajo, Conchas, Ute, Caballo, Heron and El Vado. Natural lakes exist, especially in mountain and volcanic settings, but engineered impoundments provide most of the large blue shapes visible on a statewide map. The best…
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Eight American states lie in the Great Lakes basin: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. Each has land that drains toward at least one of the five Great Lakes. Their physical shorelines differ sharply, from Minnesota’s Lake Superior coast to New York’s frontage on Lakes Erie and Ontario. Ontario is the…
The Arctic Ocean is ringed by broad shelf seas that open toward its deep central basin. Moving clockwise from the Atlantic side, a map commonly shows the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort seas, followed by waters around the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland. The Greenland Sea is often included in Arctic geography…
Nebraska’s river map is organized around one continental destination: every major river in the state ultimately belongs to the Missouri River basin. The Platte crosses the center, the Niobrara drains much of the north and the Republican crosses the southwest and south. The Loup and Elkhorn join the Platte, while the Blue and Nemaha systems…
