Follow the River

The USGS's Streamer map allows you to trace rivers or streams upstream to their source or downstream to their final destinations. The interactive map can create very dramatic visualizations of river watersheds, particularly when you trace a river upstream to show all of its tributaries.

Streamer is incredibly easy to use. Just click on a river on the map and select either the 'upstream' or '

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The Anti-Immigration Money Industry

Some companies are making a lot of money out of Donald Trump's repressive immigration policies. The amount of government money pouring into ICE contracts has almost doubled in the past year. Companies profiting from this expansion include some expected names in the prison and detention industry, such as the GeoGroup who have earned over $438 million from ICE contracts. However a number of

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Mapping the American Dream

The American Dream is based on the idea that everyone in the USA has the same opportunities to achieve prosperity and success. No matter where you are born, no matter who your parents are, with hard work, ambition and determination you can achieve wealth and success.

A new interactive map from Opportunity Insights visualizes the average outcomes in adulthood for people in every census tract in

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The Tunnels Under Capitol Hill

Underneath the palatial government buildings on Capitol Hill lies an underground network of tunnels connecting the United States Capitol to the Library of Congress, the Senate Office Building, the Home Office Building, the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives and other government buildings.

You can learn more about Washington D.C.'s underground tunnels on the Capitol Hill Tunnels story

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The Deadliest Highways in the USA

The deadliest stretch of highway in California is a 3.51-mile segment of the Sierra Highway in the Santa Clarita Valley. This small segment of highway had 11 fatalities in 2015 & 2016. The second deadliest stretch of California highway in 2015 & 2016 was a 3.70-mile stretch of State Route 74 in Hemet (also known as Florida Avenue). This stretch of road was responsible for 10 fatalities.

Panish

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How to Make a Viral Map

The most popular interactive map of this week has to be the New York Times' How Connected Is Your Community to Everywhere Else in America?. The NYT interactive map visualizes the connections people have on Facebook and comes to the conclusion that we are much more likely to know people who live near us than those who live a long way away.

I know! You're shocked, right?

The conclusion that we

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What Causes California Wildfires?

What do you get if you combine huge forests, global warming and lots of people? The answer is devastating wildfires. At least that appears to be what is happening in California.

According to The Guardian the extensive California forests are full of dead trees, nearly 129 million of them. Because of global warming the past five years have been the hottest recorded in California and the state has

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School Road Safety

Zendrive has released an interactive map which allows you to check how safe the roads are around your local schools. Zendrive's School Safety Snapshot provides a safety rating for all schools in the USA based on driver behavior around each school.

To grade each score Zendrive measured the number and type of unsafe driving events, as detected by the Zendrive platform, around the school. The

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Hurricane Florence Aerial Imagery

NOAA’s Remote Sensing Division has been flying its airplanes along the North and South Carolina coast since Saturday. The planes have been collecting damage assessment imagery in order to help and support emergency response after Hurricane Florence.

The Hurricane Florence Imagery interactive map allows you to view the latest imagery on top of a map and pre-Florence aerial imagery. The map

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Mapping Gentrification in Austin

The University of Texas was commissioned by the Austin City Council to research and map neighborhoods in the city where residents are being displaced by development and the rising cost of property. You can view the results of this research on the Austin Gentrification and Displacement Indicators interactive map.

The map allows you to see which Austin neighborhoods are most vulnerable to

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Naming Philadelphia's Neighborhoods.

Everybody loves to argue about neighborhood boundaries.

Don't they?

What makes these arguments so great is that with no official boundaries no-one can prove that their views are correct. Except if you live in Philadelphia.

Residents in Philadelphia who are involved in an argument over a local neighborhood boundary can just refer to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Philadelphia Neighborhood Map.

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How to Find an Electric Citi Bike

New York has a new bike hire system which allows people to rent pedal-assisted electric bicycles. The problem for anyone who want to use one of Citi Bike's electric bikes is that there are only 200 of them dotted around the city and they can be very difficult to find. Unless you consult I Want to Ride an Electric Citi Bike.

I Want to Ride an Electric Citi Bike is an interactive map which shows

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Real-Time Maps of Hurricane Florence

The Washington Post is mapping the amount of rainfall from Hurricane Florence in near real-time. The animated map in Hurricane Florence’s Deluge, in Real Time shows the track of Hurricane Florence and the cumulative rainfall that has fallen since 7pm on September 12th.

As the Post's animated map plays you can see the hourly rainfall markers sweep in following the track of the tropical storm. As

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AI Hurricane Forecasts

The Deep Learning-based Hurricane Intensity Estimator is a new interactive map developed by NASA which uses artificial intelligence to assess the wind speed intensity of tropical storms. You can use the map at the moment to follow the progress of Hurricane Florence as it approaches the United States and to view the intensity assessments that the model has made for this huge tropical storm.

The

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Mapping the Growth of the Soybean

In July Bloomberg explored how America uses its land. In Here's How America Uses its Land Bloomberg showed how more than a fifth of American land is given over to growing crops. They have now mapped how industrial scale factory farming has dramatically altered the types of crops grown on all that land.

In The Consolidation of the American Harvest Bloomberg maps America's massive shift from

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Mapping Segregation in American Schools

Schools in the southern states of America are as segregated now as they were 50 years ago. However it isn't just the southern states where schools are segregated along racial lines. Because of the residential segregation that exists in nearly every town and city the majority of black children in the USA end up attending schools where the majority of students are black and white children

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Mapping Hurricane Florence

The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane and Storm Surge warning for "the east coast of the United States from Edisto Beach, South Carolina northward to the North Carolina-Virginia border, including the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds". At the time of writing Hurricane Florence is forecast to approach the coast of North Carolina or South Carolina on Thursday.

The National Hurricane

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Subway Specs - Part II

New York architect Candy Chan was so amazed to discover that there are no three-dimensional plans of New York subway stations that she decided to go ahead and create her own. The result is X-Ray Area Maps, a series of beautifully drawn bird's eye view illustrations of subway stations which reveal the tunnels, platforms and escalators which exist under New York's streets.

Last Year Chan

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The D.C. Stop & Frisk Map

Black residents in Washington D.C. are the target of 80% of the police department's forcible stops. 9 in 10 of those black residents stopped & frisked by the police are male. Black residents in D.C. are stopped by the police at a rate far higher than the proportion of black residents in D.C. and far higher than the number of crimes committed by black residents. White residents in D.C. are

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How Popular is Your Name?

The Zato Novo Baby Name Interactive Map can show you how popular your name is in every state of the USA. It can even show you how the popularity of your name has changed throughout the last 100 years.

Enter your name into the map and you can view an animated choropleth view showing the popularity of that name in each state for every year since the name's first occurrence in the US census. If

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