The Rivers of Central California

  • Released Wednesday, November 30, 2016
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The central California Watershed is the largest drainage basin in California.. The USGS has created a database of this area which indicates the direction of waterflow at each point. By assembling these directions into streamflows, it is possible to trace the path of water from every point of the area to the San Pablo Bay. This animation starts with the points furthest from the bay and reveals the streams and rivers as a steady progression towards the bay until all the major rivers are revealed. The speed of the reveal of the rivers is not dependent on the actual speed of the water flow. The reveal proceeds at a constant velocity along each river path, timed so that all reveals reach the bay at the same time.

An animation of the flows along the rivers of central California. This animation does not show actual flow rates of the rivers. All rivers are shown with identical rates. The river colors and widths correspond to the relative lengths of river segments. This version shows all of California with an east-up orientation.

An animation of the flows along the rivers of central California. This animation does not show actual flow rates of the rivers. All rivers are shown with identical rates. The river colors and widths correspond to the relative lengths of river segments. This version shows central California in a north-up orientation.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, November 30, 2016.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 12:06 AM EDT.

Datasets used

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