Colorado Rivers

Flow Accumulation · 30 m DEM

What you're looking at

Colorado straddles the Continental Divide — every drop on the east side eventually reaches the Atlantic via the Mississippi-Missouri-Arkansas-Platte system; every drop on the west side reaches the Pacific via the Colorado River.

Watershed Stats

SourceUSGS 3DEP 30 m

Stream segments97,434 (vector)

Max Strahler order8

NotableContinental Divide spans state

AlgorithmD8 + Strahler

ToolWhitebox Tools

Major Rivers

Colorado R. headwatersS6
Arkansas R. (Royal Gorge)S7
Rio Grande (San Luis Valley)S6
South Platte (Denver)S7
Animas R. (Durango)S5

How it works

The Continental Divide is visible in the flow accumulation as the spine where the river network reverses direction. Headwaters of four major US river systems (Colorado, Arkansas, Rio Grande, Platte) all originate within ~50 km of each other in central Colorado.

Same engine, any scale: this is the same pipeline that renders a 160-acre RTK survey at sub-meter resolution. Only the bounding box changes.

Sources & tools listed at /data