Reimagining the World Map: A Journey Through River Basins
As a geography enthusiast and cartographer, I’ve always been fascinated by the way we represent our world through maps. Recently, I embarked on an exciting project to reimagine the world map based on river basins rather than political boundaries.
The first world map I created showcases a political landscape where national borders follow the watersheds of major river basins. This unique approach to cartography reveals a drastically different global layout compared to the traditional world maps we’re accustomed to seeing.
River basin spatial data used to create the world maps were obtained from the HydroSHEDS project, initiated in 2006 by the World Wildlife Fund US. The project’s goal is to create free digital data layers to support large-scale hydro-ecological research and applications worldwide.
