As they prepare for a satellite that will measure the height and areal extent of rivers in unprecedented detail, hydrologists have released a better map of North American river widths.
Acquired September 30, 2010, this astronaut photograph shows part of the Syr Darya River Floodplain in Kazakhstan, where the river flows through braided channels.
This false-color image from April 1, 2002, shows numerous braided channels and oxbow lakes along the Songhua River in northeastern China, just upstream of the city of Harbin.
As the ground began to thaw and snow melted, the Dnieper River and its tributaries swelled with spring run-off. According to news reports, the rivers caused some damage as flood waters inundated small cities along their banks. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite captured this image of the river system on April 4, 2004. Four major rivers are shown running into the Dnieper, the large river that forms the trunk of this tree-like structure. On the far right is the Desna River, with the Seym River branching off of it. The center right branch is formed by the Sozh River and its tributaries. The center left branch is the Dnieper, and running into it from the top left is the Byarezina River. The far left branch is formed by the Prypyats River.
In the span of three weeks, spring crept over the Siberian landscape surrounding the northern half of the Lena River. Many of the rivers in Earth’s temperate zones run high in the spring when melting snow and spring rain flood river basins. On the Lena River, however, spring flooding is almost inevitable for another reason: ice. Like other north-flowing rivers, the upper reaches of the Lena melt before their downstream counterparts. Because the northern mouth of the river remains frozen while the southern body of the river flows freely, water naturally builds behind the ice, forming a temporary reservoir that drains as the ice dwindles.
Acquired April 2, 2011, and February 27, 2011, these natural-color images show rising waters on the Kuiseb River, which flowed all the way to the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in decades.