Watersheds of North America - Part 5

For Part 5 of my series of articles where I illustrate watersheds by visualizing stream networks, I’m venturing beyond the province of Ontario. Actually, I started this trend in my last article, when I included the watershed of the Ottawa River, which includes areas in both Quebec and Ontario.

The first watershed, shown below, is that of the Ontonagon River in Michigan, USA. The Ontonagon River is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and its main stem is about 40 kilometres long. The river flows south to north and drains into Lake Superior, almost due south of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The second watershed, that of the Kaweah River in California, USA is shown below. This watershed has its headwaters in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The river flows east to west and ends at Lake Kaweah. The Kaweah River watershed is one of many watersheds that feeds water to the San Joaquin Valley, which is an immense agricultural area, providing fruits and vegetables for the USA and Canada. Most of the water that enters the valley from watersheds like the Kaweah River watershed is used for irrigation, but there is a river system that flows towards the cities of San Francisco and San Jose, where the San Joaquin River drains into San Francisco Bay.

The third and final watershed that I will show is in the province of Quebec. The Manicouagan watershed starts in the north near the border between Quebec and Labrador, with several rivers flowing north to south towards Lac Manicouagan (also referred to as the Manicouagan Reservoir). This lake formed in a crater that was created some 200 million years ago when a large meteorite hit the area.

South of the lake, the river continues to the south and drains into the St. Lawrence River near Baie-Comeau.

Visually, this watershed is appealing to me because of the round lake, which looks like an eyeball. Turned on its side, the watershed could resemble the head of an animal!

If you have a specific request or a favourite watershed, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll draw it up! The watersheds in my articles have been popular amongst readers and I’m thinking about creating wall art watersheds. Let me know if you are interested.

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