What a stream is called says a lot about its hydrology. An arroyo is dry and intermittent; bayous, swamps and sloughs refer to wetlands. Anthony Martinez, a data scientist with the USGS, extracted the feature names from streams in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database—no mean feat, considering the messiness of names—and plotted the patterns in the firefly maps shown above. Strictly speaking, these are data visualization tutorials, with lots of code in R; it’s nonetheless fascinating to see the feature names follow the conditions. See also Keir Clarke’s interactive version. [Maps Mania]

Previously: Ben Smith’s Maps of British Stream Names.