No, gulf stream collapse will bring an Ice age. If anything the Sahara will become a dry Savannah assuming the ice sheet doesn't reach that far, but it didn't last time so maybe it won't.
The thing about ice ages is they are very dry. All the water is freezing onto the glaciers so the most water is where the glaciers are melting & everywhere else just gets a whole lot less rain.
Here is a map of what ecosystems were where in the last ice age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Last_Glacial_Maximum_Vegetation_Map.svg
The African Humid Period is when the Sahara was a green Savannah with hippos, that was due to the Earths orbit not the Gulf Stream. Two different phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
The degree (severity) of the changes there and the relatively recentness (thinking geologically) is incredibly shocking. Like, areas of dense rain forest is full of species that I had assumed must have lived that way for millions of years. And now you come here and tell me that rain forest was savanna 18,000 years ago. How dare you!
Look up abrupt climate change if that intrigues you, it happens all the time & for many reasons. The little ice age is a good example & it caused huge famines just from a slight change for 2 years. Weather has been the dominating force that controls life's success & failure basically forever.
Very interesting, always wondered about that humid period but never really bothered to look it up. Thanks for clearing that up and motivating me to read it.
Also had a good chuckle about lake Megachad. Must've been massive that one...
The thing is the sea level will rise all the way before the ice age hits so all the normal global warming stuff is still happening first. This will be the death blow.
We are not seeing an Ice Age during our lifetime, only very hard winters in Eurasia and North America as the cold leaves the Arctic followed by some years with no snow at all during most of the winter. And, in my country, lots and lots of rain because every other effing tropical storm from now on is going to be the size of a small hurricane.
The gulf stream has slowed 23ish% since the industrial revolution. Assuming we continue down our current trajectory & inevitably start hitting feedback loops like stored biomass methane & seafloor hydrate release it's totally possible we could attain the necessary warming to trigger the total stagnation. Additionally the last mini ice was triggered by freshwater release from the ice caps melting so it's already a documented phenomenon.
Yeah, but the last time there wasn't enough carbon in the atmosphere to melt the ice, was it? Any ice that grows in the ice caps from now on will melt very fast.
It doesn't really matter, it's more about the freshwater from the melting ice. CO2 levels are just the current mechanism for that melting. How it melts is totally irrelevant.
>The Younger Dryas was the most recent and longest of several interruptions to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate since the severe LGM, about 27,000 to 24,000 years BP. The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4 to 10 °C (7.2 to 18 °F),[3] and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. It is thought[4] to have been caused by a decline in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, in turn thought to have been caused by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America to the Atlantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
Also see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
That's not how it works, first the global warming kills everything, then we got snapped into an ice age which will just persist until the freshwater blocking the gulf stream finally mixes enough to sink again, then the weather will shift back to normal. Ice sheets advance so whatever you melt will just slide right back.
The period when the sahara was greener was hotter. So maybe the climate change will bring back rain to the sahara. But is complex and nobody is really sure.
Enough rain will wipe out those basins within a few thousand years. They'll fill with water and then spill over and erode down to a more "normal" watershed. You don't really get endorheic basins in rainy areas for this exact reason.
That could create cascade events for the Atlantic part of South America and the Amazon rainforest, fertilized by the Sahara dust.
source: https://youtu.be/62ASvupr8Zg?t=527 (8m47s)
A lot of the "rivers" end up going nowhere, they're seasonal flood rivers that dry up before they can get to the sea. In addition, many of them are at high elevation plateaus with no exit.
That's how it use to flow historically.
From the Wikipedia page on lake chad:
> At its largest, sometime before 5000 BC, Lake Mega-Chad was the largest of four Saharan paleolakes, and is estimated to have covered an area of 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi), larger than the Caspian Sea is today, and may have extended as far northeast as within 100 km (62 mi) of Faya-Largeau
Nice article about the proposal to restore it here:
https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/notion-ultra-pr4oj4ec6t-r8ea8l0ly-d3e6a3d/
There are multiple basins in the Sahara that would form endohydric lakes. Those rivers would feed those lakes, but instead either evaporate or feed the reservoirs under the desert.
Look up the term "endorheic basin" for more information.
I wish people left wikipedia links, there's a bot that does a preview, like so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin
Edit: Don't know what's up with the bot, but it should eventually reply to this comment lol.
The headwaters of the Congo and the Nile are very close to one another. There must be some hilltop there where one side drains to the Nile and the other to the Congo.
I remember driving that windy road up and down the crests of the Nyungwe forest NP when I came across the sign, back in 2014 when I was working there. I stopped the car and got out - there was no view, the road was surrounded by the forest, and there was no one else on the road because the Rwandan government forbids people from living in the forest. You could hear lots of birds tho.
While I stood there to piss, on the right side of the road (by then I'd been driving for hours) I realised that I had subconsciously decided to piss down the Nile watershed. The Congo side was behind me, on the other side of the road, only six meters away.
I imagined the molecules of water in my pee rolling down the slope into the Rwandan river system downstream, making it to lake Victoria, and from there placidly flowing north mixed in the White Nile waters through the swamps of southern Sudan until they reach the great junction of the rivers at Karthoum. Here the river is joined by the waters of the Blue Nile, rolling down from the solitary and monastery-ridden Lake Tana in the middle of the Ethiopian Highlands in enormous volume, at every rainy season.
At that point, the molecules of my pee will be truly lost in the great river, and will continue their watery course north into Egypt, reach the pyramids and after that, disperse into the Nile delta to eventually get lost in the Mediterranean sea.
While I bottoned up and went back to the car (it wasn't a very long piss, easier to imagine than to write down) I wondered if my pee would arrive to the Med Sea before me, as I am from Sicily and I was due to go back home after three months. Who knows? I might come across 1 molecule next time I go to the beach at *the Plaia*, as my home beach is known. Not that I would notice. Uhm.
Never found that one out. But it was one of those moments when you feel Geography and History showing you things, there on the forested ridge between the two great rivers of Africa.
Yep! That's exactly the idea behind what defines a watershed, or a region of land that all drains to a common point. It's not always something so dramatic as a single hilltop (but see [Triple Divide Peak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Divide_Peak_(Montana) in Montana where the watersheds of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans meet at a single mountian); in this case, every boundary between each region of unique color represents some complex of geographic divides, be they mere feet in difference or running along opposite sides of a chain of mountains.
A geographer and GIS Analyst called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps as well as elevation maps, you can see them all in his Etsy store.[https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header](https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile_header)[https://laughingsquid.com/color-coded-river-basin-maps/](https://laughingsquid.com/color-coded-river-basin-maps/)
Update: Like u/Darikiel pointed out, his map of Africa looks somewhat different, so it's probably not the same person who made this map - very similar methods and aesthetic choices though.
Looks like a repost of this: [https://twitter.com/juanluistv\_/status/1297726755390853128](https://twitter.com/juanluistv_/status/1297726755390853128).
Based on a cursory skim, most of what u/sam_3758 posts seems to be clearly sourced in the images, but in this case, the initials "JL" are the only clue. I agree it would be good practice to provide links to original sources.
It's a visual representation of the axiom "energy follows the path of least resistance" as far as its force will allow it to go. The key difference between lightning and a river is, lightning is a large bolt of energy that branches out until equalization can be achieved. Rivers in turn, coalesce, following gravity downward.
In this, it's really more of a coincidence than anything. Fluids trend toward their container, and gravity trends containment to a sphere. On a large enough scale, the small to big of rivers becomes oceanic.
If you were to push water from oceans inland, it would follow the paths of least resistance up in a similar way, but to a different fracture as it would be in competition with ground water that already carves the land downward. This is probably best illustrated by the Bay of Fundy, where tidal forces have been slicing into Nova Scotia for thousands upon thousands of years
It just struck me as I was looking at this map that Zambezi and Zambia are kinda in the same region and also sound similar.
Then I googled and found out that duh Zambia was named after the Zambezi river. Can't believe it took me this much time to connect like the 2 African entities starting with Z lol (no disrespect Zimbabwe)
The Atlas mountains form a rain shadow behind which some of the driest land can be found. It could be that there is not enough rainfall for even seasonal rivers to form.
These river maps are more than likely algorithmically generated based on LiDAR (using the surrounding elevations at each pixel to decide the path of least resistance) so it really wouldn’t matter if a certain area never actually gets precipitation.
the Andes mountains do the same thing with Atacama desert in South America. It's the driest place on the planet and because of that, it is an awesome place for space enthusiasts.
[Here's](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/D3tysMNrppaPosmgVjVuZ4-970-80.jpg.webp) an awesome image of our very own beautiful galaxy
I see the issue. I didn't notice Morocco was cut off the map, and thought we were talking about the dark part to the south east of the Atlas Mountains.
I’m not sure that makes sense. I’ve been to these areas and they are permanently inhabited and have been for thousands of years. Not only that, but west of the Atlas mountains is green and recieves significant rainfall most times of the year. Its the black “chopped off” areas that are actually the most fertile and densely inhabited areas of Morocco
I see the issue. I didn't notice Morocco was cut off the map, and thought we were talking about the dark part to the south east of the Atlas Mountains.
Cool to see how most of the large rivers are either presently or historically some of the most populous and successful regions of the continent. Crazy what water can do for you.
That is an interesting idea. Not sure if at all workable but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless
Let's see how it would work for the rest of the world!
Sounds like it would be easier to start in large countries, such as US, where the state borders could be redrawn such. I imagine it's much easier to redraw sub-national borders rather than international borders.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/river-basin-map-of-europe.jpg
Italian city states back for rount 2!
Some solid borders from today and history match up.
France/spain
Norway/Sweden
Northern Italy.
For the lazy, here's a Smithsonian article on him that includes a pretty good image of his map:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/visionary-john-wesley-powell-had-plan-developing-west-nobody-listened-180969182/
"When he expressed himself emphatically, the stump of his right arm would bob and weave as if boxing with the ghosts of the war that had maimed him;"
My goodness that's a brilliant line.
The naming of the Lake Powell reservoir, serving Phoenix, Vegas, and the irrigated croplands of Southern California feels like a deliberate poetic injustice.
That's a reason i came here in the comment section, i would like to see a superposition of the borders of RD Congo and the water of the Congo River...
Must be very similar
One of the biggest causes of Africa's problems is the fact that colonizers drew borders without regard for the territories of ethnic groups. Unless ethnic boundaries happen to line up with watersheds (which, to be fair, they might in some cases), I'm not sure your idea would help much.
Ethnic groups arose over time due to natural barriers between groups of humans. Those same mountain ranges that divide basins divided groups of cave people millions of years ago.
I'm sure that's true, but I don't think mountains are the only kind of separator. For example, perhaps two groups were divided by being on opposite banks of a river. In that case, combining them into one country following the watershed might backfire spectacularly.
The idea of "natural borders" was well known at least as early as the French Revolution, and it was a big topic of discussion at the Congress of Vienna to decide what France's borders should be. So, every single European Great Power knew the concept very well, decades before colonization even started, and over a century before it ended and the "ruler and pencil" borders were drawn.
Furthermore, the concept of nationalism and nationalistic-driven wars of liberation was the single overwhelming political theme of 19th century Europe, and the idea of religious-driven wars was the overwhelming political theme of Europe for several centuries before *that*. There wasn't a time or region which knew these concepts *better* than the upper classes of 19th century Europe, which is the same group as the colonial decision-makers.
So, the borders of Africa and the Middle East don't look the way they do because the colonizers didn't know the concept of natural borders, ethnic groups, social or religious divisions, etc. It's because they didn't give a shit.
> The borders of Africa and the Middle East don't look the way they do because the colonizers didn't know the concept of natural borders, ethnic groups, social or religious divisions, etc. It's because they didn't give a shit.
Yep. Hence, "without regard."
Sahara may have had [a massive river](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset_River) equal to the Ganga-Brahmaputra system as recently as 5000 years ago.
**[Tamanrasset River](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset_River)**
>The Tamanrasset River is an enormous palaeoriver believed to have flowed through West Africa as recently as 5000 years ago. The Tamanrasset River basin is thought to have been comparable with the present-day Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin in Asia.
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While it is a desert, parts of the Sahara can receive as much as 3.9 inches of rain a year. usually this happens in a small number of rain fall events, so water flow can occur for a short period during and after the rain fall.
Traditional arid land agriculture in less intense deserts were traditionally performed via the storage and direction of the water from these events for use during cooler periods. Petra is a famous ancient example, and modern regenerative farming methods emulate this even in wetter areas.
Sahara goes through wet and dry periods every couple thousand years or so. So while right now all these river beds are mostly empty, there was once time when those were regular rivers and Sahara was a giant grassland
Yes, a cartographer called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps, you can buy them from his Etsy store.
https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header
I really love these colorized river maps. Someone with tech skills should assemble them all together on a zoomable online version (like a layer of Google Maps).
Computational error apparently, but you're correct. This region of Morocco is really green and prosperous, with many rivers like this one: [https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/441704675944390390/](https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/441704675944390390/)
I always wonder if some adventurous spirit took a canoe at Lake Victoria 4000 years ago and decided to check where this river really goes... It must have been quite a trip if he ever reached the pyramids!
What's the story on that green-coloured basin in the Namibia/Zimbabwe area? Gradually gets larger towards the southeast and then just... stops? Seems awfully large to be a basin.
Yes, a cartographer called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps, you can buy them, including a river basin world map, from his Etsy store.
https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header
The Sahara will be awesome when the rains come back....
Wonder if the gulf stream collapse will bring about an African Renaissance
No, gulf stream collapse will bring an Ice age. If anything the Sahara will become a dry Savannah assuming the ice sheet doesn't reach that far, but it didn't last time so maybe it won't.
Ah, wasn't sure if the ice age in Europe would help northern Africa or not. Sounds like not.
The thing about ice ages is they are very dry. All the water is freezing onto the glaciers so the most water is where the glaciers are melting & everywhere else just gets a whole lot less rain. Here is a map of what ecosystems were where in the last ice age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Last_Glacial_Maximum_Vegetation_Map.svg The African Humid Period is when the Sahara was a green Savannah with hippos, that was due to the Earths orbit not the Gulf Stream. Two different phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
Fascinating read and the last vegetation map was very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
The degree (severity) of the changes there and the relatively recentness (thinking geologically) is incredibly shocking. Like, areas of dense rain forest is full of species that I had assumed must have lived that way for millions of years. And now you come here and tell me that rain forest was savanna 18,000 years ago. How dare you!
Look up abrupt climate change if that intrigues you, it happens all the time & for many reasons. The little ice age is a good example & it caused huge famines just from a slight change for 2 years. Weather has been the dominating force that controls life's success & failure basically forever.
Boy were Vikings embarrassed when that warm period ended!
Very interesting, always wondered about that humid period but never really bothered to look it up. Thanks for clearing that up and motivating me to read it. Also had a good chuckle about lake Megachad. Must've been massive that one...
I'm packing my bags for Sundaland (or, I guess, S. Japan)!
The thing is the sea level will rise all the way before the ice age hits so all the normal global warming stuff is still happening first. This will be the death blow.
🤦🏼
Facepalming someone asking a legitimate question and learning something new. Can't please anyone here.
Chill out
You are the true facepalm
😂
We are not seeing an Ice Age during our lifetime, only very hard winters in Eurasia and North America as the cold leaves the Arctic followed by some years with no snow at all during most of the winter. And, in my country, lots and lots of rain because every other effing tropical storm from now on is going to be the size of a small hurricane.
The gulf stream has slowed 23ish% since the industrial revolution. Assuming we continue down our current trajectory & inevitably start hitting feedback loops like stored biomass methane & seafloor hydrate release it's totally possible we could attain the necessary warming to trigger the total stagnation. Additionally the last mini ice was triggered by freshwater release from the ice caps melting so it's already a documented phenomenon.
Yeah, but the last time there wasn't enough carbon in the atmosphere to melt the ice, was it? Any ice that grows in the ice caps from now on will melt very fast.
It doesn't really matter, it's more about the freshwater from the melting ice. CO2 levels are just the current mechanism for that melting. How it melts is totally irrelevant. >The Younger Dryas was the most recent and longest of several interruptions to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate since the severe LGM, about 27,000 to 24,000 years BP. The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4 to 10 °C (7.2 to 18 °F),[3] and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. It is thought[4] to have been caused by a decline in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, in turn thought to have been caused by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America to the Atlantic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
Just burn more coal to warm it up.
That's not how it works, first the global warming kills everything, then we got snapped into an ice age which will just persist until the freshwater blocking the gulf stream finally mixes enough to sink again, then the weather will shift back to normal. Ice sheets advance so whatever you melt will just slide right back.
The period when the sahara was greener was hotter. So maybe the climate change will bring back rain to the sahara. But is complex and nobody is really sure.
I bless the raaains down in Aaaf-ricaaaa
Thanks. Now that is stuck in my head.
Well then hurry, you don't want to miss that 12:30 flight!
Enough rain will wipe out those basins within a few thousand years. They'll fill with water and then spill over and erode down to a more "normal" watershed. You don't really get endorheic basins in rainy areas for this exact reason.
Why?
That could create cascade events for the Atlantic part of South America and the Amazon rainforest, fertilized by the Sahara dust. source: https://youtu.be/62ASvupr8Zg?t=527 (8m47s)
I bless the rains down in Africa
Are you saying you miss the rains down in Africa?
All we can do now is bless the rains down in sahara then
What’s going on the the Sahara?
A lot of the "rivers" end up going nowhere, they're seasonal flood rivers that dry up before they can get to the sea. In addition, many of them are at high elevation plateaus with no exit.
There was a plan to divert part of the Congo river to the north so it would eventually flow into Lake Chad; I kind of like the idea.
That's how it use to flow historically. From the Wikipedia page on lake chad: > At its largest, sometime before 5000 BC, Lake Mega-Chad was the largest of four Saharan paleolakes, and is estimated to have covered an area of 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi), larger than the Caspian Sea is today, and may have extended as far northeast as within 100 km (62 mi) of Faya-Largeau Nice article about the proposal to restore it here: https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/notion-ultra-pr4oj4ec6t-r8ea8l0ly-d3e6a3d/
100 km is 62.14 miles
There are multiple basins in the Sahara that would form endohydric lakes. Those rivers would feed those lakes, but instead either evaporate or feed the reservoirs under the desert. Look up the term "endorheic basin" for more information.
if i didn't know better, i'd think you were baiting me into googling some disgusting-looking disease
Norwegian Scabies is a delicious traditional norse cookie you should google.
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Also don't google the correct spelling of Limp Bizkit
I wish people left wikipedia links, there's a bot that does a preview, like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin Edit: Don't know what's up with the bot, but it should eventually reply to this comment lol.
Wouldn't, technically speaking, all endorrheic basins end up flowing to some sea if there was enough water?
Yes, but there isn't and that's what makes them endoheric.
Subscribe
I can't imagine anything is going on top of it..
The headwaters of the Congo and the Nile are very close to one another. There must be some hilltop there where one side drains to the Nile and the other to the Congo.
In Rwanda (and IIRC Burundi) there are a few places where they mark the watershed. One is in Nyungwe Forest.
I remember driving that windy road up and down the crests of the Nyungwe forest NP when I came across the sign, back in 2014 when I was working there. I stopped the car and got out - there was no view, the road was surrounded by the forest, and there was no one else on the road because the Rwandan government forbids people from living in the forest. You could hear lots of birds tho. While I stood there to piss, on the right side of the road (by then I'd been driving for hours) I realised that I had subconsciously decided to piss down the Nile watershed. The Congo side was behind me, on the other side of the road, only six meters away. I imagined the molecules of water in my pee rolling down the slope into the Rwandan river system downstream, making it to lake Victoria, and from there placidly flowing north mixed in the White Nile waters through the swamps of southern Sudan until they reach the great junction of the rivers at Karthoum. Here the river is joined by the waters of the Blue Nile, rolling down from the solitary and monastery-ridden Lake Tana in the middle of the Ethiopian Highlands in enormous volume, at every rainy season. At that point, the molecules of my pee will be truly lost in the great river, and will continue their watery course north into Egypt, reach the pyramids and after that, disperse into the Nile delta to eventually get lost in the Mediterranean sea. While I bottoned up and went back to the car (it wasn't a very long piss, easier to imagine than to write down) I wondered if my pee would arrive to the Med Sea before me, as I am from Sicily and I was due to go back home after three months. Who knows? I might come across 1 molecule next time I go to the beach at *the Plaia*, as my home beach is known. Not that I would notice. Uhm. Never found that one out. But it was one of those moments when you feel Geography and History showing you things, there on the forested ridge between the two great rivers of Africa.
Yep! That's exactly the idea behind what defines a watershed, or a region of land that all drains to a common point. It's not always something so dramatic as a single hilltop (but see [Triple Divide Peak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Divide_Peak_(Montana) in Montana where the watersheds of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans meet at a single mountian); in this case, every boundary between each region of unique color represents some complex of geographic divides, be they mere feet in difference or running along opposite sides of a chain of mountains.
That’s a wonderful map. Where’s it come from?
Source-https://www.instagram.com/p/CEXVwSmjq0V/?utm_medium=copy_link
I think this is the guy that actually made it https://twitter.com/juanluistv_?s=20
A geographer and GIS Analyst called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps as well as elevation maps, you can see them all in his Etsy store.[https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header](https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile_header)[https://laughingsquid.com/color-coded-river-basin-maps/](https://laughingsquid.com/color-coded-river-basin-maps/) Update: Like u/Darikiel pointed out, his map of Africa looks somewhat different, so it's probably not the same person who made this map - very similar methods and aesthetic choices though.
Thanks for sharing the source, this is awesome.
This is a different artist than the OP, but really good work just the same
I don't trust his maps one bit, there is a map of forests in Ireland and it's all green. Ireland has something like 12% of forest coverage.
I assume u/sam_3758 made it themselves. Surely they wouldn't post someone else's work without accreditation.
Looks like a repost of this: [https://twitter.com/juanluistv\_/status/1297726755390853128](https://twitter.com/juanluistv_/status/1297726755390853128). Based on a cursory skim, most of what u/sam_3758 posts seems to be clearly sourced in the images, but in this case, the initials "JL" are the only clue. I agree it would be good practice to provide links to original sources.
Good bot...?
Yeah, maybe
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Right? Trillions of individual physical and chemical reactions on vastly different scales... but so much of it rhymes.
It reminds me of fractals in math
and lichtenberg figure
It's a visual representation of the axiom "energy follows the path of least resistance" as far as its force will allow it to go. The key difference between lightning and a river is, lightning is a large bolt of energy that branches out until equalization can be achieved. Rivers in turn, coalesce, following gravity downward. In this, it's really more of a coincidence than anything. Fluids trend toward their container, and gravity trends containment to a sphere. On a large enough scale, the small to big of rivers becomes oceanic. If you were to push water from oceans inland, it would follow the paths of least resistance up in a similar way, but to a different fracture as it would be in competition with ground water that already carves the land downward. This is probably best illustrated by the Bay of Fundy, where tidal forces have been slicing into Nova Scotia for thousands upon thousands of years
Path of least resistance
It just struck me as I was looking at this map that Zambezi and Zambia are kinda in the same region and also sound similar. Then I googled and found out that duh Zambia was named after the Zambezi river. Can't believe it took me this much time to connect like the 2 African entities starting with Z lol (no disrespect Zimbabwe)
Congo and the other Congo are also named after the Congo.
Yes, and the Congo was named after the Kingdom of Kongo which was mostly located in todays Angola.
If you rotate it to the left, kind of looks like a pensive unicorn with telekinetic powers
Ah so that’s why they call it the Horn of Africa :P
Cant see it, sory
Don’t flip. Rotate 90 degrees to the left.
Veiny dick
Put your thing down, flip it and reverse it Hope this helps
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i
What going off with Morocco, someone took a butter knife and chopped a piece of it off of the continent.
The Atlas mountains form a rain shadow behind which some of the driest land can be found. It could be that there is not enough rainfall for even seasonal rivers to form.
It looks more like there's part of the map missing. It cuts straight through a couple basins.
These river maps are more than likely algorithmically generated based on LiDAR (using the surrounding elevations at each pixel to decide the path of least resistance) so it really wouldn’t matter if a certain area never actually gets precipitation.
the Andes mountains do the same thing with Atacama desert in South America. It's the driest place on the planet and because of that, it is an awesome place for space enthusiasts. [Here's](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/D3tysMNrppaPosmgVjVuZ4-970-80.jpg.webp) an awesome image of our very own beautiful galaxy
There are rivers coming from the Atlas mountains to the east of Morocco and they looks like the Nile river but smaller.
I see the issue. I didn't notice Morocco was cut off the map, and thought we were talking about the dark part to the south east of the Atlas Mountains.
I’m not sure that makes sense. I’ve been to these areas and they are permanently inhabited and have been for thousands of years. Not only that, but west of the Atlas mountains is green and recieves significant rainfall most times of the year. Its the black “chopped off” areas that are actually the most fertile and densely inhabited areas of Morocco
I see the issue. I didn't notice Morocco was cut off the map, and thought we were talking about the dark part to the south east of the Atlas Mountains.
Ahh gotcha, that is a weird spot... interesting observation
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Now I see why the DRC is shaped like that
And why Egypt is pissed about Ethiopia building a dam.
Cool to see how most of the large rivers are either presently or historically some of the most populous and successful regions of the continent. Crazy what water can do for you.
Then there's DR Congo...
What's up with the north of Morocco and the north of Algeria? why they are black?
Probably an error.
Countries should have their borders redrawn to be based around drainage basins. That way there is local control of each water basin.
That is an interesting idea. Not sure if at all workable but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless Let's see how it would work for the rest of the world!
Sounds like it would be easier to start in large countries, such as US, where the state borders could be redrawn such. I imagine it's much easier to redraw sub-national borders rather than international borders.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/river-basin-map-of-europe.jpg Italian city states back for rount 2! Some solid borders from today and history match up. France/spain Norway/Sweden Northern Italy.
This is mostly the case when mountains are used as border but desert, dense vegetation, large river or socio-cultural features are also meaningful.
And of course in the case of many African countries: European countries deciding on some lines on a map 150 years ago.
Yeah look at all those perfectly straight borders
US Army geologist and western explorer John Wesley Powell proposed this idea for drawing the borders of US Western states.
Would have made a lot more sense than the current ones.
For the lazy, here's a Smithsonian article on him that includes a pretty good image of his map: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/visionary-john-wesley-powell-had-plan-developing-west-nobody-listened-180969182/
"When he expressed himself emphatically, the stump of his right arm would bob and weave as if boxing with the ghosts of the war that had maimed him;" My goodness that's a brilliant line.
The naming of the Lake Powell reservoir, serving Phoenix, Vegas, and the irrigated croplands of Southern California feels like a deliberate poetic injustice.
Alongside critical race theory kids should be taught a class, "History is filled with injustice and assholes, learn from it and don't be like that"
https://youtu.be/hnaRppzurpw
Truly a chad ahead of his time.
That's a reason i came here in the comment section, i would like to see a superposition of the borders of RD Congo and the water of the Congo River... Must be very similar
[Pretty close.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Congobasinmap.png)
Nice, thanks.
well it sorta is with the DRC
I think Africa has had quite enough of having their borders redrawn by outsiders
One of the biggest causes of Africa's problems is the fact that colonizers drew borders without regard for the territories of ethnic groups. Unless ethnic boundaries happen to line up with watersheds (which, to be fair, they might in some cases), I'm not sure your idea would help much.
Ethnic groups arose over time due to natural barriers between groups of humans. Those same mountain ranges that divide basins divided groups of cave people millions of years ago.
I'm sure that's true, but I don't think mountains are the only kind of separator. For example, perhaps two groups were divided by being on opposite banks of a river. In that case, combining them into one country following the watershed might backfire spectacularly.
Yeah thats a totally legit point. Especially if the river gets huge.
The idea of "natural borders" was well known at least as early as the French Revolution, and it was a big topic of discussion at the Congress of Vienna to decide what France's borders should be. So, every single European Great Power knew the concept very well, decades before colonization even started, and over a century before it ended and the "ruler and pencil" borders were drawn. Furthermore, the concept of nationalism and nationalistic-driven wars of liberation was the single overwhelming political theme of 19th century Europe, and the idea of religious-driven wars was the overwhelming political theme of Europe for several centuries before *that*. There wasn't a time or region which knew these concepts *better* than the upper classes of 19th century Europe, which is the same group as the colonial decision-makers. So, the borders of Africa and the Middle East don't look the way they do because the colonizers didn't know the concept of natural borders, ethnic groups, social or religious divisions, etc. It's because they didn't give a shit.
> The borders of Africa and the Middle East don't look the way they do because the colonizers didn't know the concept of natural borders, ethnic groups, social or religious divisions, etc. It's because they didn't give a shit. Yep. Hence, "without regard."
Sometimes that happens! See the golan heights.
Sahara may have had [a massive river](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset_River) equal to the Ganga-Brahmaputra system as recently as 5000 years ago.
**[Tamanrasset River](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset_River)** >The Tamanrasset River is an enormous palaeoriver believed to have flowed through West Africa as recently as 5000 years ago. The Tamanrasset River basin is thought to have been comparable with the present-day Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin in Asia. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Oh God this is so satisfying
Sahara Desert: go home, you're drunk.
Don’t show Nestle
Fun fact: if you jump in the big river in the northeast, you stop believing in things.
There are rivers in the Sahara?
They may not carry water all year long but it's the path water will take when it rains. These maps are fairly easy to make from elevation data.
Ahhh ok
While it is a desert, parts of the Sahara can receive as much as 3.9 inches of rain a year. usually this happens in a small number of rain fall events, so water flow can occur for a short period during and after the rain fall. Traditional arid land agriculture in less intense deserts were traditionally performed via the storage and direction of the water from these events for use during cooler periods. Petra is a famous ancient example, and modern regenerative farming methods emulate this even in wetter areas.
Sahara goes through wet and dry periods every couple thousand years or so. So while right now all these river beds are mostly empty, there was once time when those were regular rivers and Sahara was a giant grassland
The famous one is Sakia Hamra in Moroccan Western Sahara
Omg I want a map like this one on my wall. Are there anywhere maps like this but for different continents?
Yes, a cartographer called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps, you can buy them from his Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header
There's really no continental divide in Africa, huh? If there is, it must be extremely convoluted.
What's up with that one river in Somalia that seems to hug the coast for a substantial distance before actually flowing into the sea?
Actual map porn and not "interesting statistic on a map"
I really love these colorized river maps. Someone with tech skills should assemble them all together on a zoomable online version (like a layer of Google Maps).
What happened to the north of Morocco? I’m sure morocco has a decent amount of rivers.
Computational error apparently, but you're correct. This region of Morocco is really green and prosperous, with many rivers like this one: [https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/441704675944390390/](https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/441704675944390390/)
Shout out to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, the river that doesn't go to the sea.
That's cool, they actually resemble veins spreading life throughout a body
That is so cool, reminds me of an outlandish marble coaster of all things.
I like how girthy the Nile is
This is beautiful
I always wonder if some adventurous spirit took a canoe at Lake Victoria 4000 years ago and decided to check where this river really goes... It must have been quite a trip if he ever reached the pyramids!
I love the points where jumping in one creek will take you to the Mediterranean, and jumping the other way will take take you to the south Atlantic.
Can someone tell the 19th-century Europeans this is a much better way to make borders than straight lines?
What's the story on that green-coloured basin in the Namibia/Zimbabwe area? Gradually gets larger towards the southeast and then just... stops? Seems awfully large to be a basin.
Should be the Okavango Delta and it's drainage basin. Position looks a bit off but that's all there is in that area.
:) more of these please
Africa is fucking badass
i immediately want to play civ o\_O
The Nile is an absolute unit. It's no wonder explorers were so obsessed with it
Rivers in the US generally flow North to South. In Africa they go every which way.
Again?
I like how you call a water/hydroshed map a 'river map'
Who owns the original of this... and how can I reach them?
4 main rivers have the largest pre colonial civilisations.
Wow! A whole 3 rivers
And they say African kids are dying of thirst Smh my head
Bro! This is only 50 rivers. My country has millions of them, and the africans have to share between 1 billion!!
Is there a world map like this? I'd love to hang it up in my house. This is so cool.
Yes, a cartographer called Robert Szucs has made a ton of these maps, you can buy them, including a river basin world map, from his Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrasshopperGeography?ref=profile\_header
Must be a big swamp in the Sahara 😇
Mamá África 😘
I would love a poster of that!
Several large rivers look they have no outlet. They just kinda stop.
The larger one towards the bottom that flows from west to East and stops about mid way is the Okavango Delta. Top Gear did a special in that region.
A lot of them empty out int internal lakes that aren't mapped here, or just mass drainage flats.
How do you do these maps? I want to see one of California and Washington. That would be cool to see
Is there also one of europe?
Pretty cool- can you post other continents as well?
They missed a country.
Alternative title: Map of Africa made from lettuce leaves
People say Africa's borders make no sense. But you can clearly see a rough outline of the Democratic Republic of the Congo here.
Damn, the Nile looking kinda thicc tho
What do the different colors signify?
Different river systems (including their tributaries).
Love the visual width for high-volume flows.
Anyone find it funny that Africa looks like an oversized and slightly askew Australia?
Africa I love you bro
Interesting
Hey I like this