Geography
in the
News™
Neal G.
Lineback
RIVERS RUN
NORTH
Water is one of the world’s most
valuable resources and U.S. students are
spending more and more classroom time
studying streams and their organisms.
One of the greatest geographic myths
about streams, however, continues to be
that few, if any, rivers run northward.
This myth has probably been around
ever since north was placed at the top of
a map. The fact that a map hanging on a
wall gives the impression that north is up
and south is down is only an illusion. A
stream, of course, may flow in any geographic direction as long as it’s downhill.
As a university professor, I am often
amazed at the number of
high school graduates
who have learned that
water cannot run northward. Clearly, this myth
is being perpetuated in
some elementary and high
school classrooms.
Teachers aren’t infallible, of course, but a
grounding in the fundamentals of physical geography helps overcome
such illogical conclusions
as, “north is uphill.” Anyone can readily use maps
to disprove this particular
myth.
Pick any continent
and select the five or 10
largest rivers and categorize them by the principal
direction of flow. Such an
exercise easily dispels the myth, and provides students with an understanding of
continental drainage patterns.
In North America, the Mississippi
River, a southward flowing stream, dominates the drainage patterns. This river’s
size and direction of flow may have
helped perpetuate the myth among U.S.
teachers and students. But many of the
Mississippi’s headwaters actually flow
northward before joining the Mississippi.
For example, the Tennessee River flows
northward as it crosses west Tennessee to
join the Ohio River; and the Kanawha
flows northward as it crosses West Virginia to join the Ohio River.
The Mackenzie River of Canada flows
northward to the Arctic Ocean. The Snake
River of Idaho finally turns northward to
join the great Columbia River. And the
San Joaquin (wah-KEEN) of the Central
Valley of California flows northward to
join the Sacramento River.
How about South America?
Venezuela’s major river, the Orinoco,
flows northward before turning eastward
to the Atlantic Ocean. The Magdalena
River of Columbia flows northward to the
Caribbean. All of the tributaries in the
southern Amazon Basin must flow northward to empty into the Amazon.
Europe? Many famous rivers of northern Europe flow northward: the Garonne,
Rhine, Elbe, Oder and Vistula are five.
Even the headwaters of the Seine flow
northward.
Three great Asian rivers are examples
of northward flowing streams: the Ob,
Australia has relatively few permanent streams, because most of the continent is desert and steppe (semiarid grassland). The Murray and Darling rivers of
New South Wales and South Australia
are the largest and best-known rivers on
the continent. The headwaters of the
Murray rise on the north slopes of the
Great Australian Alps and flow northward before turning west. And a group of
small streams along Australia’s northern
coast flow northward, but none is very
large.
The remaining continent, Antarctica,
is a glacier-covered land mass nearly centered on the South Pole. Although no
permanent streams flow from Antarctic,
many seasonal rivulets of melt water do
flow to the ocean during the summer.
Virtually all of these rivulets ultimately
flow away from the pole, which means
that they all flow northward.
Streams drain from areas of high elevation to areas of lower elevation, regardless of direction. Certainly just as
many of the world’s streams drain northward as drain southward.
“Rivers can’t run north,” however,
is one of several ridiculous geographic
myths that periodically show up in class-
Rivers Do Run “Up”
Yenisey
Mackenzie
Snake
San Joaquin
G
R
E
O
Kanawha V
Garonne
Rhine
Elbe
Oder
Vistula
G R
O
V
E
Lena
Ob
Nile
Orinoco
Magdalena
Tocantins
Murray
Geography in the News 6/28/02
©2002
Yenisey and Lena. They cross Siberia to
the Arctic Ocean where ice dams during
the winter render them useless for transportation much of the year.
Africa’s most famous river, the Nile,
is the classic northward flowing river. But
many of the headwaters of the Congo
River flow northward to enter this mighty
stream.
© 2002 maps.com
M. Johnson
rooms.
And that’s Geography in the News.
June 28, 2002. #630.
(This article is revised from GITN 251,
first published in May 1993. The author is a
Geography Professor at Appalachian State
University, Boone, NC.)