The incredible 'vein maps' of the world that reveal rivers as you've never seen them before

A series of colourful maps has revealed a breathtaking look at the vein-like network of river systems around the world, plotting the countless waterways that stretch across nearly every continent, from North America to Australia.

The maps, created by geographer and GIS analyst Robert Szucs, visualize permanent and temporary rivers and streams, using a rainbow of colours to differentiate the intricate branches.

Using a system known as Strahler Stream Order Classification, Szucs highlights the staggering breadth of Earth’s watersheds, with the individual flows involved in each particular basin shown as lines of varying thickness.

The creator uses the open-source QGIS software to visualize the networks based on scientific data.

By the Strahler Stream Order, branches of higher stream orders are indicated as thicker lines.

Szucs, who shares his work on Imgur under the name Fejetlenfej, has created stunning maps of the river basins all around the world, including those in the United States, Africa, South America, Australia and Japan.

High resolution prints are available on Etsy as well, where he goes by Grasshopper Geography.

The work reflects a ‘lifelong passion for beautiful maps,’ combining scientific expertise with art to create maps that are both ‘informative and beautiful,’ Szucs explains on his website.

He recently updated his map of the United States, which reveals the massive expanse of river basins across the country – in particular, those which feed the Mississippi River. 

The previous version, he explains, ‘had a few small errors, like a missing part of the Columbia river, funny looking rivers on the Mexican border, neighbouring basins having too similar colours, etc, and I also decided to remove the Great Lakes.’

There are 18 major river basins in the 48 states of the contiguous US, but much of the map is dominated by the massive catchment area for the Mississippi River, including the Upper and Lower Mississippi River Basins, along with Missouri River Basin and the Arkansas-White-Red Basin, as seen in pink.

The top left portion of the map shows much of the Pacific Northwest basin, illustrated in a brownish-orange color.

And, the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins stand out as well, in bright yellow. 

At the top of the map, the Souris-Red-Rainy Basin is illustrated in green.

It also shows the basin of the Rio Grande snaking between the Colorado Basin and the Arkansas-White-Red Basin. The Rio Grande is indicated in blue, with this basin reaching all the way down to the bottom of Texas.

Along both the east and west coasts, a jumble of rainbow colours reveals the networks of much smaller systems that border the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.