10 ms·

Waterway Map

434 points by wcedmisten 3y ago

jkubicek 3y ago
The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything, which is a bummer, because I've always wondered how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area.
- ioseph 3y ago
  It showed one path in my area which is a portage trail for canoes connecting two waterways
- reaperducer 3y ago
  The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything Selecting "Rivers" shows an awful lot of dry gulches and alluvial fans that haven't had water in them in half a century or more.
  - Affric 3y ago
    Yep. Navigable by canoe leaves Australia with about 50 km of two rivers in Gippsland to be navigable. It shows the Hunter and the Nepean as a single system. Connectivity between ephemeral waterways which are joined by ephemeral lakes is poor. All in all I think it speaks to the ownership of the market by private interests and the lack of utility of water navigation for most people.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Is there a "drag canoe" option?
- ghaff 3y ago
  You have both hills and urban areas blocking about the whole east side of San Francisco Bay. Hard for me to imagine being able to get through that. And further north you've got the Central Valley.
  - cowsandmilk 3y ago
    I'm not sure how hills or urban areas block the ability to canoe... Waterways always are locally low and canoe trips on rivers will typically have hills on either side of you. And I've been on plenty of canoe trips that went through the downtown of a city. Most older cities are built in some place navigable by boat.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      The parent was asking about getting down to the SF Bay from somewhere in Sierras. I'd have to study a map in detail but I doubt there are much in the way of east/west routes in that area. Also, while there are navigable waterways in cities they tend to be very limited. There's often one river in older cities that flows through the center somewhere. It really depends on the watersheds. You can get to Boston from pretty far north but you would have to cheat by going down the coast from the mouth of the Merrimack River which I think captures all the rivers in southern NH/northern MA.
      - chad_oliver 3y ago
        San Francisco owes its growth as a city to the fact that the Bay provides a connection between the Sierras (and their goldfields) and the Pacific Ocean. Regarding Boston, the interesting thing is that it used to be connected to the Merrimack via the Middlesex Canal. My understanding is that this is silted up now (which you presumably already know) but it shows how many more connections we used to have.
    - callalex 3y ago
      There are many dams and gigantic underground pipes that carry the water through the area. It works fine for the water but not for kayakers. For example the Briones Reservoir is upstream of the San Pablo Reservoir connected by huge gravity-powered pipes under the mountains between them. They are in fact redoing them right now.
  - jkubicek 3y ago
    There are a significant number of canal systems to the east of the bay. I have no where boating is allowed, but the ones we frequently drive past are ~100 feet wide and extend at least out to Stockton and Sacramento. I have no clue if you can get past those cities, though.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are a ton of rivers and sections thereof that are easily navigable flatwater in MA which don't show up.
  - timeon 3y ago
    Compared to Europe, US is sparsely mapped in OSM. But even in Europe there are not many waterways tagged with canoe.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      And it's seasonal. Flatwater vs. whitewater (also bidirectional vs. one). How hard? How much portaging? None of it's really reasonable for a binary database.
- jjav 3y ago
  > how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area I've thought of doing this, I wonder if there are any good resources on best paths to take.
- bravefoot 3y ago
  In the valley, we talk about the Cosumnes and Clavey rivers as "undammed" but they may still have flood control and irrigation equipment in them. Growing up near the Mokulumne, one day I'd like to go from Camanche to the sea. It's not that far but would still have at least one portage at Woodbridge
- r0m4n0 3y ago
  As a native Sacramentan and boater, you can definitely get from the Sierra to the bay. Would you take your boat out to get around dams? (Lake Natoma dam, Folsom’s dam, etc). If you wanted and could do that, you positively could do the ride. The American is fed by snow melt from the top of the sierra and plenty of water in the spring to ride it down. Once you reach the delta the current would help you less so you better have some good oars. Also be ready to navigate some serious rapids in some spots on the American. Nothing that a little kayaking class wouldn’t prepare you for. They used to have a few large riverboats that used to bring people from Sacramento to the bay. One called the Delta Queen and the other called the Delta King. Three presidents even rode on them including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. They permanently affixed the Delta King on the docks in Old Sacramento where you can still eat at a restaurant or stay in an onboard hotel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King All that to say, plenty of boats in and around the Central Valley.
- rmc 3y ago
  > “The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything” The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. That map only looks at things with the `canoe` tag in OSM. There are a lot of waterways in OSM which do not have this tag. If you know of missing data, you can just edit OSM and it'll show up on WWM.org tomorrow! (I made WaterwayMap.org)
macintux 3y ago
When I was young, my grandfather talked about the possibility of taking his boat from his home in central Florida all the way to the coast. 40+ years later, this fills me with delight. He could have done it.
- croemer 3y ago
  Definitely not all of these waterways are navigable. There are even underground ones, essentially pipes.
  - spot13 3y ago
    Right. Like trails in the woods, they shift and evolve.
    - jschrf 3y ago
      Bingo. Trying to map the flow of water is like trying to map the flow of time.
deleted 3y ago
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yawpitch 3y ago
Kinda neat to turn on the Navigable By Boat filter and zoom in on England to find where I live, and all the 2500 miles of actually connected and navigable English (and Welsh) canals and rivers I’ve been on over the last seven years. Or course there’s also a whole lot of “waterways” that sure as hell aren’t navigable by any boat that can support a human, but might have been at some point.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  Yep. The first one I went looking for was the Fleet, which is something of a ghost river at the end of its journey.
- s3krit 3y ago
  I went straight into these comments hoping to find another HN (potentially narrow) boater! What's interesting and somewhat amusing is that this map has determined that the section of the Soar that joins with the Trent just north of Loughborough is apparently unnavigable. This time of year I'd generally agree.
  - yawpitch 3y ago
    It’s got a lot of details wrong… it took us five real years (plus one fake pandemic one) to visit every nook and cranny, and they’ve implied things are navigable that sure as heck aren’t — just try and get on the Dee from Chester without a crane except in a lethally high flood, the lock was disassembled years ago — and unnavigable that definitely are (it’s got the Manchester Ship Canal on there, but not the Mersey we crossed to get to it).
    - rmc 3y ago
      (I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OSM. You edit it to fix it yourself.
    - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
      There's a difference between legally navigable and practically navigable. The Dee has a public right of navigation and therefore is tagged as boat=yes in OpenStreetMap. That's not to make any judgement as to whether or not you can get your boat through the Chester weirgate! The Mersey ought to be tagged with boat=yes, though. I'm now wondering about Walton Lock which I think still has a right of navigation though is very definitely impassable...
AlbertCory 3y ago
There's a group of people who regularly sail a great circle up the Atlantic, down the St. Lawrence & the Great Lakes, through the Chicago River & canals to the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and east along the Gulf Coast & around Florida. I can't remember anything more about it than that. Anyone?
- dnlbyl 3y ago
  I believe that is the Great Loop: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Sounds like a great trip (IF you like being on a boat).
  - pomian 3y ago
    What is maximum mast height? There are loops in Europe like this, but you need a mast that you can take down, which means you are limited in boat size - for sailboats anyway.
    - topkai22 3y ago
      19.6’,limited by a bridge outside Chicago. Several routes require a maximum 15’ height and others are 17’. https://www.greatloop.org/great-loop-information/great-loop-faqs.html#FAQs%20about%20GL%20Boats https://www.greatloop.org/great-loop-information/great-loop-... I’ve been utterly fascinated by this since I learned about it a few months ago. It seems like a very approachable but still serious adventure and achievement once done.
mcdonje 3y ago
Weird how so many streams end at the Massachusetts state line. Not the dev's fault of course. I've noticed a similar difference of how rock formations are recorded at state line boundaries on USGS maps. Dealing with different datasets from different bureaucracies is an intractable problem.
- tppiotrowski 3y ago
  See: USGS 3DEP Program
- rmc 3y ago
  (I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. I only have to deal with 1 dataset. I suspect people have imported data from Massachusetts into OSM, hence why you see the edge. You can edit OSM to connect things up yourself.
mxfh 3y ago
Seems great for debugging waterway topologies. Some things I noticed after a few minutes: - A lot of smaller rivers system and tributaries seem not to be connected all the way through as seeing smaller disconnected systems with shorter total lengths. - small rivers that and at the shore geometry of larger rivers but are not connected to the main centerline - some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies, having an unnamed waterway along the centerline connect through the named lake seems to be a good compromise to not mess up rendering but helps with linking up topologies. https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/52843/does-the-river-go-through-the-lake-or-end-and-restart-at-the-lake-shore https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/52843/does-the-rive...
- rmc 3y ago
  (I made WaterwayMap.org) Yeah, it's been very useful to make OSM data better. > some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies Yeah, the OSM community is still discussing this: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-river-lines-be-mapped-through-lakes-estuaries-gulfs-and-other-large-water-bodies/104438 https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-river-lines-be-...
tamimio 3y ago
Cool, brb selling my car and getting a boat!
fanf2 3y ago
Weirdly, in Cambridge, the River Cam is not marked as a natural waterway (fair enough, it is canalized) but the entirely artificial drainage ditches around the college back gardens and Hobson’s Conduit are.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  The data on Open Street Map (OSM) doesn't materialise mysteriously out of the ether! It is the result of people like you and I doing recces. For just one effort to grab data there is a great app called "Street Complete" (SC) - give it a bash. You know how the Cam is so why not tell us all? I live in Yeovil, Somerset and after a few sessions on SC, OSM has way more detail on my immediate surroundings than Google's cars will ever gather. They (Google int al) will probably "steal" my work eventually but then it is public knowledge so not stealing at all. SC gathers a lot of information. For example it wants to know about accessibility, which has to be a laudable goal. OSM doesn't flog adverts so it is rather more inclusive than anything that the FAAANAAAANGS might contemplate. It isn't driven by financial profit, so you get back what you put in.
inasio 3y ago
The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is very interesting here, completely empty of waterways which would make one think it's a dessert area per other similar areas of the map, yet it's a very lush tropical jungle. A ton of water yet all of it runs underground, cenotes [0] are (mostly) undergound sinkholes, amazing to swim in [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote
- ijustlovemath 3y ago
  Fun fact about cenotes: most of them were formed from the geologic upset that followed the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65Mya
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    Exactly, and if you look at a hydrological map of cenote locations in the Yucatan Penninsula, a very obvious, concentrated majority of them align very closely with the ancient buried crater's curvature. It's fascinating, and especially when you consider that of the millions of tourists and locals who visit the cenotes annualy, very few realize what the scope and ferociously violent origins are of the lovely little "scattered" blue pools they play in..
femto 3y ago
And its inverse: the watershed calculator: https://mghydro.com/watersheds/ https://mghydro.com/watersheds/ Edit: and river runner: https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/ https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/
- rmc 3y ago
  I made WaterwayMap.org. I wanna make a watershed map too!
vvpan 3y ago
To those who are thinking about waterway travel I recommend the book "The Unlikely Voyage of Jack De Crow: A Mirror Odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea".
- goatbrain 3y ago
  Would also recommend "Travels by Narrowboat" available on Amazon Prime. The chug-chug of the diesel engine as John moves from one canal to another (with some sort of horrific/terrific can-based recipe thrown in every now and then) is great background TV to have on for that sort of occasion.
throw0101d 3y ago
Bunch of rivers in/around Toronto (Canada), but we've also lost a few to history as well: * https://www.lostrivers.ca/disappearing.html https://www.lostrivers.ca/disappearing.html * https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/toronto-lost-rivers/ https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/toronto-lost-rivers/ * https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_under_toronto/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_u...
pavon 3y ago
Who mapped these? In New Mexico we have a ton of dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year. Zooming in at places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of them are mapped. I know of rez roads[1] nearby that aren't on OSM or any map I know of, but the ditch we used for cross country practice is. Wild! [1] Two-track dirt roads on the Navajo Reservation that are not regularly maintained, or officially numbered/named but which are actively used.
- RicoElectrico 3y ago
  You can go to https://openstreetmap.org/ https://openstreetmap.org/ , zoom in and enable the map data layer. History is accessible from the object pages.
  - pavon 3y ago
    Thanks, that is helpful. It looks like for some of the larger ones the editors left comments that dataset was imported from USGS quads which makes sense, while other smaller ones don't list any source information - possibly mapped personally by hiking with a GPS?
    - racnid 3y ago
      I know I personally mapped one with a GPS and canoe.
- NelsonMinar 3y ago
  Sometimes waterway maps include calculated flowlines. These are algorithmically derived from digital elevation data and more accurately represent where water would flow were there water flowing. That's really important not just for New Mexico arroyos but for most of the surface of the earth; there are a lot more flowlines than perennial streams. I don't know the provenance of this data though. It's pretty spotty, I don't think someone just imported the NHD flowlines dataset or something.
- Mr-Frog 3y ago
  In the USA, this is likely sourced from the National Hydrography Dataset: https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/national-hydrography-dataset https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/national-hydrograp...
eudoraexplora 3y ago
Looks like I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Bravo to whomever put this together!
s3krit 3y ago
I've been waiting for the day that HN would have something tangentially related to the English and Welsh canal system so I could gush about it. For those that don't know, we have around 2500 miles of (mostly) navigable canals around the UK. They were built during the industrial revolution prior to the invention of trains such that we could transport coal and other goods relatively quickly and without damage (consider trying to transport pottery, for instance, on the perilous roads of the late 1700s. If the bumpy roads didn't destroy your wares, the highwaymen might). These days, obviously, all that has passed and instead we have a community of almost entirely leasure boaters - some choosing to own narrowboats [1] purely for pleasure, but a significant amount of us choose to live on them. Some based in marinas but quite a few of us (myself included) preferring a much more nomadic lifestyle - being obliged by law to move every 14 days at a maximum to new areas and consequentially experiencing the richness and beauty of what is, in my mind, a living museum - a testament to our past. Life aboard a narrowboat is cozy. You never have much space but I don't find myself lacking. It gets cold in winter, but most of us have multifuel stoves which we stuff with coal and (often foraged) wood. Right now I'm sat listening to the wind and rain lashing against the boat (it's almost 4am so I should really get to bed), the boat gently rocking from the weather. And I can honestly say that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat
- mayormcmatt 3y ago
  Gush on! This is the kind of thing I love to occasionally see here. Wish I could live on the water, but slip fees are pricey and limited where I'm at. Best to you!
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  I only found out about narrowboats recently from [1] (found at [2]), and they sound so nice! I've wanted a tiny house or a skoolie, and I think if I was in Britain, I'd go for a narrowboat just as easily. [1]: https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2024/01/09/battlestation-2024/ https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2024/01/09/battlestation-2024/ [2]: https://lobste.rs/s/jrh1od/lobsters_battlestations_screenshots#c_zxcd8r https://lobste.rs/s/jrh1od/lobsters_battlestations_screensho...
mariya12 3y ago
[flagged]
anonu 3y ago
This is cool - makes me realize how incredible the Intracoastal Waterway is [1]: 3000 miles of mostly protected waterways along the US Eastern Seaboard. Definitely on my bucket list to sail it down one day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway
gry 3y ago
Minnesota's has expansive rivers feeding the Mississippi[1] and it has one million acres designated to a canoe wilderness -- the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness -- bounded by the Canadian Quetico to the north[2]. They are navigable by canoe by design, yet they are flitting dots. It gives me pause; what is this site trying to convey? It's a fantastic effort, yet for the water we have, it doesn't match. [1] https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/watertrails/interactive_map/index.html https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/watertrails/interactive_map/inde... [2] https://www.paddleplanner.com/tools/maps/bwcaqueticomap.aspx https://www.paddleplanner.com/tools/maps/bwcaqueticomap.aspx
maxglute 3y ago
Is there a legend somewhere? Or a way to delineate something like a small culvert versus large canal.
- rmc 3y ago
  (I made WaterwayMap.org) There isn't a legend, because all waterways are treated the same.
hasoleju 3y ago
If you zoom in you see a length in km next to each river. For small ones it looks like it is the total length of that waterway. For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. It is not the length, it's too big for that. Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? It also does not change when I travel along that waterway. My example is the river Neckar close to Heidelberg in Germany. The number there is:2595963 km In reality the length of each river is measured from it's estuary. For bigger waterways in Germany you see a sign every kilometer with a number. The number is the distance in kilometers to the estuary of that waterway.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  > Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? Exactly this.
- rmc 3y ago
  > For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. […] Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? Correct. (I made WaterwayMap.org)
londons_explore 3y ago
I was surprised at the rivers in the middle of the Sahara. But upon zooming in on Google satellite view, I do see dry riverbeds in those places, and even the occasional tree along the route of the 'river', so I guess occasionally there must be a storm and those rivers become wet and flow.
- swarnie 3y ago
  Similarly i was surprised to find its marked a river in my village i didn't know existed. Turns out its the drainage ditch they dug to stop the new Barrett boxes from flooding. I think the data may need some work....
  - timeon 3y ago
    > I think the data may need some work.... Well If you want to, mapping around local village is good way to start. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dditch https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dditch https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent
flohofwoe 3y ago
Crazy detailed, but also kinda random. For my home area, there are small creeks/brooks (??? in German "Bach") which are literally just half a meter wide and in the middle of a forest on the map, but others which are flowing right through settlements are not listed.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  Yes, https://www.openstreetmap.org https://www.openstreetmap.org has quite inconsistent detail as it relies on people mapping stuff. And help is welcome, anyone can join and help with mapping!
lukasm 3y ago
I had a look at central Europe and this map not accurate e.g. motor boar = yes and it only shows w few parts of the same river.
- rmc 3y ago
  (I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap. It's possible many rivers are missing the `boat` tag (which that uses). If you add the missing tag, then it'll appear on WWM.org tomorrow!
Jemm 3y ago
When choosing 'Navigable by boat', the massive Trent-Severn system in Southern Ontario disappears.
- Thedarkb 3y ago
  Well, it's probably worth your while to update it then.
- rmc 3y ago
  (I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap, and updated daily. Something missing on WWM.org means something missing on OSM. You can fix that yourself!
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation. I checked the Netherlands and Germany. You'd need more details for safely navigating on the water. But it definitely has potential. There are also some other specialized open street map based maps for - rails: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ - cycling: https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ - sea map (competes with this I guess, and is a bit more detailed for navigation): https://map.openseamap.org/ https://map.openseamap.org/ And probably loads of other ones.
- s3krit 3y ago
  For the canals in the UK there's https://opencanalmap.uk/ https://opencanalmap.uk/
  - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
    FWIW it's not really "open" in any sense. The code isn't public let alone open, and the source data doesn't conform to the Open Definition: the data is from the Canal & River Trust who have exasperatingly placed a non-commercial restriction on it. (I can guarantee that CRT spent more in lawyer hours writing a custom licence than they've received income from licensing the data commercially.)
- timeon 3y ago
  > Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation. It is mostly QA tool for OSM contributors.
rmc 3y ago
Hello! I'm the creator of WaterwayMap.org. The code is here: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/waterwaymap.org/ https://github.com/amandasaurus/waterwaymap.org/> if you want to file a bug report or feature request. The main code to calculate the network is `osm-lump-ways`: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/osm-lump-ways https://github.com/amandasaurus/osm-lump-ways>
ozim 3y ago
Something in the same topic: https://map.openseamap.org/ https://map.openseamap.org/

434 points by wcedmisten 3y ago

The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything, which is a bummer, because I've always wondered how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area.

ioseph 3y ago
It showed one path in my area which is a portage trail for canoes connecting two waterways
reaperducer 3y ago
The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything Selecting "Rivers" shows an awful lot of dry gulches and alluvial fans that haven't had water in them in half a century or more.
- Affric 3y ago
  Yep. Navigable by canoe leaves Australia with about 50 km of two rivers in Gippsland to be navigable. It shows the Hunter and the Nepean as a single system. Connectivity between ephemeral waterways which are joined by ephemeral lakes is poor. All in all I think it speaks to the ownership of the market by private interests and the lack of utility of water navigation for most people.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Is there a "drag canoe" option?
ghaff 3y ago
You have both hills and urban areas blocking about the whole east side of San Francisco Bay. Hard for me to imagine being able to get through that. And further north you've got the Central Valley.
- cowsandmilk 3y ago
  I'm not sure how hills or urban areas block the ability to canoe... Waterways always are locally low and canoe trips on rivers will typically have hills on either side of you. And I've been on plenty of canoe trips that went through the downtown of a city. Most older cities are built in some place navigable by boat.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The parent was asking about getting down to the SF Bay from somewhere in Sierras. I'd have to study a map in detail but I doubt there are much in the way of east/west routes in that area. Also, while there are navigable waterways in cities they tend to be very limited. There's often one river in older cities that flows through the center somewhere. It really depends on the watersheds. You can get to Boston from pretty far north but you would have to cheat by going down the coast from the mouth of the Merrimack River which I think captures all the rivers in southern NH/northern MA.
    - chad_oliver 3y ago
      San Francisco owes its growth as a city to the fact that the Bay provides a connection between the Sierras (and their goldfields) and the Pacific Ocean. Regarding Boston, the interesting thing is that it used to be connected to the Merrimack via the Middlesex Canal. My understanding is that this is silted up now (which you presumably already know) but it shows how many more connections we used to have.
  - callalex 3y ago
    There are many dams and gigantic underground pipes that carry the water through the area. It works fine for the water but not for kayakers. For example the Briones Reservoir is upstream of the San Pablo Reservoir connected by huge gravity-powered pipes under the mountains between them. They are in fact redoing them right now.
- jkubicek 3y ago
  There are a significant number of canal systems to the east of the bay. I have no where boating is allowed, but the ones we frequently drive past are ~100 feet wide and extend at least out to Stockton and Sacramento. I have no clue if you can get past those cities, though.
ghaff 3y ago
There are a ton of rivers and sections thereof that are easily navigable flatwater in MA which don't show up.
- timeon 3y ago
  Compared to Europe, US is sparsely mapped in OSM. But even in Europe there are not many waterways tagged with canoe.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    And it's seasonal. Flatwater vs. whitewater (also bidirectional vs. one). How hard? How much portaging? None of it's really reasonable for a binary database.
jjav 3y ago
> how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area I've thought of doing this, I wonder if there are any good resources on best paths to take.
bravefoot 3y ago
In the valley, we talk about the Cosumnes and Clavey rivers as "undammed" but they may still have flood control and irrigation equipment in them. Growing up near the Mokulumne, one day I'd like to go from Camanche to the sea. It's not that far but would still have at least one portage at Woodbridge
r0m4n0 3y ago
As a native Sacramentan and boater, you can definitely get from the Sierra to the bay. Would you take your boat out to get around dams? (Lake Natoma dam, Folsom’s dam, etc). If you wanted and could do that, you positively could do the ride. The American is fed by snow melt from the top of the sierra and plenty of water in the spring to ride it down. Once you reach the delta the current would help you less so you better have some good oars. Also be ready to navigate some serious rapids in some spots on the American. Nothing that a little kayaking class wouldn’t prepare you for. They used to have a few large riverboats that used to bring people from Sacramento to the bay. One called the Delta Queen and the other called the Delta King. Three presidents even rode on them including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. They permanently affixed the Delta King on the docks in Old Sacramento where you can still eat at a restaurant or stay in an onboard hotel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King All that to say, plenty of boats in and around the Central Valley.
rmc 3y ago
> “The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything” The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. That map only looks at things with the `canoe` tag in OSM. There are a lot of waterways in OSM which do not have this tag. If you know of missing data, you can just edit OSM and it'll show up on WWM.org tomorrow! (I made WaterwayMap.org)

macintux 3y ago

When I was young, my grandfather talked about the possibility of taking his boat from his home in central Florida all the way to the coast. 40+ years later, this fills me with delight. He could have done it.

croemer 3y ago
Definitely not all of these waterways are navigable. There are even underground ones, essentially pipes.
- spot13 3y ago
  Right. Like trails in the woods, they shift and evolve.
  - jschrf 3y ago
    Bingo. Trying to map the flow of water is like trying to map the flow of time.

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yawpitch 3y ago

Kinda neat to turn on the Navigable By Boat filter and zoom in on England to find where I live, and all the 2500 miles of actually connected and navigable English (and Welsh) canals and rivers I’ve been on over the last seven years. Or course there’s also a whole lot of “waterways” that sure as hell aren’t navigable by any boat that can support a human, but might have been at some point.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Yep. The first one I went looking for was the Fleet, which is something of a ghost river at the end of its journey.
s3krit 3y ago
I went straight into these comments hoping to find another HN (potentially narrow) boater! What's interesting and somewhat amusing is that this map has determined that the section of the Soar that joins with the Trent just north of Loughborough is apparently unnavigable. This time of year I'd generally agree.
- yawpitch 3y ago
  It’s got a lot of details wrong… it took us five real years (plus one fake pandemic one) to visit every nook and cranny, and they’ve implied things are navigable that sure as heck aren’t — just try and get on the Dee from Chester without a crane except in a lethally high flood, the lock was disassembled years ago — and unnavigable that definitely are (it’s got the Manchester Ship Canal on there, but not the Mersey we crossed to get to it).
  - rmc 3y ago
    (I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OSM. You edit it to fix it yourself.
  - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
    There's a difference between legally navigable and practically navigable. The Dee has a public right of navigation and therefore is tagged as boat=yes in OpenStreetMap. That's not to make any judgement as to whether or not you can get your boat through the Chester weirgate! The Mersey ought to be tagged with boat=yes, though. I'm now wondering about Walton Lock which I think still has a right of navigation though is very definitely impassable...

AlbertCory 3y ago

There's a group of people who regularly sail a great circle up the Atlantic, down the St. Lawrence & the Great Lakes, through the Chicago River & canals to the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and east along the Gulf Coast & around Florida. I can't remember anything more about it than that. Anyone?

dnlbyl 3y ago
I believe that is the Great Loop: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Sounds like a great trip (IF you like being on a boat).
- pomian 3y ago
  What is maximum mast height? There are loops in Europe like this, but you need a mast that you can take down, which means you are limited in boat size - for sailboats anyway.
  - topkai22 3y ago
    19.6’,limited by a bridge outside Chicago. Several routes require a maximum 15’ height and others are 17’. https://www.greatloop.org/great-loop-information/great-loop-faqs.html#FAQs%20about%20GL%20Boats https://www.greatloop.org/great-loop-information/great-loop-... I’ve been utterly fascinated by this since I learned about it a few months ago. It seems like a very approachable but still serious adventure and achievement once done.

mcdonje 3y ago

Weird how so many streams end at the Massachusetts state line. Not the dev's fault of course. I've noticed a similar difference of how rock formations are recorded at state line boundaries on USGS maps. Dealing with different datasets from different bureaucracies is an intractable problem.

tppiotrowski 3y ago
See: USGS 3DEP Program
rmc 3y ago
(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. I only have to deal with 1 dataset. I suspect people have imported data from Massachusetts into OSM, hence why you see the edge. You can edit OSM to connect things up yourself.

mxfh 3y ago

Seems great for debugging waterway topologies. Some things I noticed after a few minutes: - A lot of smaller rivers system and tributaries seem not to be connected all the way through as seeing smaller disconnected systems with shorter total lengths. - small rivers that and at the shore geometry of larger rivers but are not connected to the main centerline - some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies, having an unnamed waterway along the centerline connect through the named lake seems to be a good compromise to not mess up rendering but helps with linking up topologies. https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/52843/does-the-river-go-through-the-lake-or-end-and-restart-at-the-lake-shore https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/52843/does-the-rive...

rmc 3y ago
(I made WaterwayMap.org) Yeah, it's been very useful to make OSM data better. > some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies Yeah, the OSM community is still discussing this: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-river-lines-be-mapped-through-lakes-estuaries-gulfs-and-other-large-water-bodies/104438 https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-river-lines-be-...

tamimio 3y ago

Cool, brb selling my car and getting a boat!

fanf2 3y ago

Weirdly, in Cambridge, the River Cam is not marked as a natural waterway (fair enough, it is canalized) but the entirely artificial drainage ditches around the college back gardens and Hobson’s Conduit are.

gerdesj 3y ago
The data on Open Street Map (OSM) doesn't materialise mysteriously out of the ether! It is the result of people like you and I doing recces. For just one effort to grab data there is a great app called "Street Complete" (SC) - give it a bash. You know how the Cam is so why not tell us all? I live in Yeovil, Somerset and after a few sessions on SC, OSM has way more detail on my immediate surroundings than Google's cars will ever gather. They (Google int al) will probably "steal" my work eventually but then it is public knowledge so not stealing at all. SC gathers a lot of information. For example it wants to know about accessibility, which has to be a laudable goal. OSM doesn't flog adverts so it is rather more inclusive than anything that the FAAANAAAANGS might contemplate. It isn't driven by financial profit, so you get back what you put in.

inasio 3y ago

The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is very interesting here, completely empty of waterways which would make one think it's a dessert area per other similar areas of the map, yet it's a very lush tropical jungle. A ton of water yet all of it runs underground, cenotes [0] are (mostly) undergound sinkholes, amazing to swim in [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote

ijustlovemath 3y ago
Fun fact about cenotes: most of them were formed from the geologic upset that followed the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65Mya
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  Exactly, and if you look at a hydrological map of cenote locations in the Yucatan Penninsula, a very obvious, concentrated majority of them align very closely with the ancient buried crater's curvature. It's fascinating, and especially when you consider that of the millions of tourists and locals who visit the cenotes annualy, very few realize what the scope and ferociously violent origins are of the lovely little "scattered" blue pools they play in..

femto 3y ago

And its inverse: the watershed calculator: https://mghydro.com/watersheds/ https://mghydro.com/watersheds/ Edit: and river runner: https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/ https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/

rmc 3y ago
I made WaterwayMap.org. I wanna make a watershed map too!

vvpan 3y ago

To those who are thinking about waterway travel I recommend the book "The Unlikely Voyage of Jack De Crow: A Mirror Odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea".

goatbrain 3y ago
Would also recommend "Travels by Narrowboat" available on Amazon Prime. The chug-chug of the diesel engine as John moves from one canal to another (with some sort of horrific/terrific can-based recipe thrown in every now and then) is great background TV to have on for that sort of occasion.

throw0101d 3y ago

Bunch of rivers in/around Toronto (Canada), but we've also lost a few to history as well: * https://www.lostrivers.ca/disappearing.html https://www.lostrivers.ca/disappearing.html * https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/toronto-lost-rivers/ https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/toronto-lost-rivers/ * https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_under_toronto/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_u...

pavon 3y ago

Who mapped these? In New Mexico we have a ton of dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year. Zooming in at places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of them are mapped. I know of rez roads[1] nearby that aren't on OSM or any map I know of, but the ditch we used for cross country practice is. Wild! [1] Two-track dirt roads on the Navajo Reservation that are not regularly maintained, or officially numbered/named but which are actively used.

RicoElectrico 3y ago
You can go to https://openstreetmap.org/ https://openstreetmap.org/ , zoom in and enable the map data layer. History is accessible from the object pages.
- pavon 3y ago
  Thanks, that is helpful. It looks like for some of the larger ones the editors left comments that dataset was imported from USGS quads which makes sense, while other smaller ones don't list any source information - possibly mapped personally by hiking with a GPS?
  - racnid 3y ago
    I know I personally mapped one with a GPS and canoe.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
Sometimes waterway maps include calculated flowlines. These are algorithmically derived from digital elevation data and more accurately represent where water would flow were there water flowing. That's really important not just for New Mexico arroyos but for most of the surface of the earth; there are a lot more flowlines than perennial streams. I don't know the provenance of this data though. It's pretty spotty, I don't think someone just imported the NHD flowlines dataset or something.
Mr-Frog 3y ago
In the USA, this is likely sourced from the National Hydrography Dataset: https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/national-hydrography-dataset https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/national-hydrograp...

eudoraexplora 3y ago

Looks like I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Bravo to whomever put this together!

s3krit 3y ago

I've been waiting for the day that HN would have something tangentially related to the English and Welsh canal system so I could gush about it. For those that don't know, we have around 2500 miles of (mostly) navigable canals around the UK. They were built during the industrial revolution prior to the invention of trains such that we could transport coal and other goods relatively quickly and without damage (consider trying to transport pottery, for instance, on the perilous roads of the late 1700s. If the bumpy roads didn't destroy your wares, the highwaymen might). These days, obviously, all that has passed and instead we have a community of almost entirely leasure boaters - some choosing to own narrowboats [1] purely for pleasure, but a significant amount of us choose to live on them. Some based in marinas but quite a few of us (myself included) preferring a much more nomadic lifestyle - being obliged by law to move every 14 days at a maximum to new areas and consequentially experiencing the richness and beauty of what is, in my mind, a living museum - a testament to our past. Life aboard a narrowboat is cozy. You never have much space but I don't find myself lacking. It gets cold in winter, but most of us have multifuel stoves which we stuff with coal and (often foraged) wood. Right now I'm sat listening to the wind and rain lashing against the boat (it's almost 4am so I should really get to bed), the boat gently rocking from the weather. And I can honestly say that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat

mayormcmatt 3y ago
Gush on! This is the kind of thing I love to occasionally see here. Wish I could live on the water, but slip fees are pricey and limited where I'm at. Best to you!
gavinhoward 3y ago
I only found out about narrowboats recently from [1] (found at [2]), and they sound so nice! I've wanted a tiny house or a skoolie, and I think if I was in Britain, I'd go for a narrowboat just as easily. [1]: https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2024/01/09/battlestation-2024/ https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2024/01/09/battlestation-2024/ [2]: https://lobste.rs/s/jrh1od/lobsters_battlestations_screenshots#c_zxcd8r https://lobste.rs/s/jrh1od/lobsters_battlestations_screensho...

mariya12 3y ago

[flagged]

anonu 3y ago

This is cool - makes me realize how incredible the Intracoastal Waterway is [1]: 3000 miles of mostly protected waterways along the US Eastern Seaboard. Definitely on my bucket list to sail it down one day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

gry 3y ago

Minnesota's has expansive rivers feeding the Mississippi[1] and it has one million acres designated to a canoe wilderness -- the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness -- bounded by the Canadian Quetico to the north[2]. They are navigable by canoe by design, yet they are flitting dots. It gives me pause; what is this site trying to convey? It's a fantastic effort, yet for the water we have, it doesn't match. [1] https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/watertrails/interactive_map/index.html https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/watertrails/interactive_map/inde... [2] https://www.paddleplanner.com/tools/maps/bwcaqueticomap.aspx https://www.paddleplanner.com/tools/maps/bwcaqueticomap.aspx

maxglute 3y ago

Is there a legend somewhere? Or a way to delineate something like a small culvert versus large canal.

rmc 3y ago
(I made WaterwayMap.org) There isn't a legend, because all waterways are treated the same.

hasoleju 3y ago

If you zoom in you see a length in km next to each river. For small ones it looks like it is the total length of that waterway. For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. It is not the length, it's too big for that. Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? It also does not change when I travel along that waterway. My example is the river Neckar close to Heidelberg in Germany. The number there is:2595963 km In reality the length of each river is measured from it's estuary. For bigger waterways in Germany you see a sign every kilometer with a number. The number is the distance in kilometers to the estuary of that waterway.

Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
> Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? Exactly this.
rmc 3y ago
> For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. […] Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? Correct. (I made WaterwayMap.org)

londons_explore 3y ago

I was surprised at the rivers in the middle of the Sahara. But upon zooming in on Google satellite view, I do see dry riverbeds in those places, and even the occasional tree along the route of the 'river', so I guess occasionally there must be a storm and those rivers become wet and flow.

swarnie 3y ago
Similarly i was surprised to find its marked a river in my village i didn't know existed. Turns out its the drainage ditch they dug to stop the new Barrett boxes from flooding. I think the data may need some work....
- timeon 3y ago
  > I think the data may need some work.... Well If you want to, mapping around local village is good way to start. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dditch https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dditch https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent

flohofwoe 3y ago

Crazy detailed, but also kinda random. For my home area, there are small creeks/brooks (??? in German "Bach") which are literally just half a meter wide and in the middle of a forest on the map, but others which are flowing right through settlements are not listed.

matkoniecz 3y ago
Yes, https://www.openstreetmap.org https://www.openstreetmap.org has quite inconsistent detail as it relies on people mapping stuff. And help is welcome, anyone can join and help with mapping!

lukasm 3y ago

I had a look at central Europe and this map not accurate e.g. motor boar = yes and it only shows w few parts of the same river.

rmc 3y ago
(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap. It's possible many rivers are missing the `boat` tag (which that uses). If you add the missing tag, then it'll appear on WWM.org tomorrow!

Jemm 3y ago

When choosing 'Navigable by boat', the massive Trent-Severn system in Southern Ontario disappears.

Thedarkb 3y ago
Well, it's probably worth your while to update it then.
rmc 3y ago
(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap, and updated daily. Something missing on WWM.org means something missing on OSM. You can fix that yourself!

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation. I checked the Netherlands and Germany. You'd need more details for safely navigating on the water. But it definitely has potential. There are also some other specialized open street map based maps for - rails: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ - cycling: https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ - sea map (competes with this I guess, and is a bit more detailed for navigation): https://map.openseamap.org/ https://map.openseamap.org/ And probably loads of other ones.

s3krit 3y ago
For the canals in the UK there's https://opencanalmap.uk/ https://opencanalmap.uk/
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  FWIW it's not really "open" in any sense. The code isn't public let alone open, and the source data doesn't conform to the Open Definition: the data is from the Canal & River Trust who have exasperatingly placed a non-commercial restriction on it. (I can guarantee that CRT spent more in lawyer hours writing a custom licence than they've received income from licensing the data commercially.)
timeon 3y ago
> Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation. It is mostly QA tool for OSM contributors.

rmc 3y ago

Hello! I'm the creator of WaterwayMap.org. The code is here: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/waterwaymap.org/ https://github.com/amandasaurus/waterwaymap.org/> if you want to file a bug report or feature request. The main code to calculate the network is `osm-lump-ways`: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/osm-lump-ways https://github.com/amandasaurus/osm-lump-ways>

ozim 3y ago

Something in the same topic: https://map.openseamap.org/ https://map.openseamap.org/