The Caspian Sea is about as strange as a body of water gets. Its surface still sits 27.5 meters (90 feet) below sea level, and water doesn’t flow out of it—it’s isolated from the oceans, and relies on a series of Asian rivers to maintain its levels.
Last summer, a team of geologists set out on an expedition to study Slims River in the Yukon, but when they got there, the once majestic river was nowhere to be seen. The scientists attribute the missing river to a retreating glacier, which caused a dramatic shift in the direction of water flow. It’s yet another…
Courts in New Zealand and India have granted legal personhood status to three rivers. The strange status is meant to protect the waters from pollution, but the measure could lead to unintended consequences, while undermining efforts to grant personhood status to living beings who actually deserve it.
As the election nears, our country can at times feel like a hideous and hateful place. Let this map of the United States’ river basins made by Imgur user Fejetlenfej remind you that, at the very least, our country can be beautiful. Fejetlenfej—a geographer who sells their maps on Etsy—created the image using QGIS…
A river near an industrial town in Russia has turned suddenly blood-red. But it’s not an omen of something mystical wrong in the cosmos. Rather, the source of the problem is probably a leaky factory upstream.
Watch as satellite imagery shows how the windy Ucayali River in Peru changed its course over the span of 25 years. The sharp bends of the original river start moving around and then even merge at some points creating a whole new pathway, while the leftover bodies of water are just put out on their own. It’s just…
Here’s a lovely view of a salmon run in Lake Iliamna, Alaska. Just being able to see the rivers filled with salmon from up above is incredible, it’s just packed to the brim with fish. It’s also pretty cool to be able to track all the different areas the salmon are in, from the mouth of the river to the gravel beds.
Rio Paraná and Rio Paraguay are like spoiled kids refusing to shake and make up in this photo from the International Space Station, one clear blue and the other dark with orange sediments.
Hurricane Sandy petered out over the East Coast almost exactly three years ago. The storm left chaos in its wake—and in some cases, that chaos is still floating in its waterways, says the New York Times.
It was 90 degrees at 10:00 a.m. when I stepped off the Orange Line in the LA neighborhood of Van Nuys. A perfect day for the beach, or for the pool, or for positioning yourself directly beneath those little misters you can find at finer restaurants in the Valley. But I was about to embark upon a very different Los…
Good news to those of you who still want to drag race, chase T-1000s, or, heck, even land small planes in the concrete banks of the LA River. Frank Gehry, the architect chosen for a controversial new master plan for the revitalized river, says he wants the cement walls to remain.
This time of year kayaks and inner tubes crowd the crystal-clear waters of the Animas River, which flows through the western Colorado city of Durango. Last night, the river was quickly abandoned as one million gallons of wastewater seeping from a local mine slowly trickled downstream, eventually coloring the entire…
You’ve likely seen plenty of footage of the Los Angeles River—in Terminator 2, Grease, Drive, shall I go on? But unless you’ve poked around the famous watershed in a kayak, or traveled the path that runs alongside it by bike, you probably haven’t seen it like this.
I don’t know if this is kayaking or more like plummeting water torture punishment. Because though I see a kayak and a paddle and a human, the first person GoPro footage is just pure chaos that alternates between your worst nightmares of drowning and your worst nightmares of falling. I’m sure these guys are talented…
Louisiana's wetlands are famously disappearing, thanks to a century of dredging and drilling in the Mississippi River. A football field-sized swath of land falls into the ocean every hour. But along on small part of the coastline, the land is actually growing. Welcome to Atchafalaya Bay.
The gorgeous patterns you see here come courtesy of an astronaut-shot photo showing the Mattagami (top right) and Missinaibi Rivers (bottom right), flowing into the Moose River (left) in northern Ontario. Keep scrolling for more details from Mika McKinnon.
Weather is oddly topographical. Rarely is it as clear as in this photograph snapped by astronaut Terry Virts from the International Space Station, where clouds have settled into the Seine river valley meandering near Paris, France.
There are over 250,000 rivers in the U.S., some subtly serene, others tremendously tumultuous. But in this visualization you can see them all—and the color shows which way their waters flow.
When you see a bright red river or a lake that glows a vivid green color, you probably think it belongs on another planet. But these incredibly striking bodies of water are right here on Earth. Here are the most beautiful and alien-looking rivers and lakes, sporting bizarre colors.
Since 2011, artist Sonja Hinrichsen has brought volunteers out onto the snow of Colorado to create art that can only be full seen from above. 2014's entry was an abstract interpretation of original flow of the Yampa River and its four main tributaries in Routt County, made on an artificial lake created by damming.
