Water and the Hydrogeology of Watersheds - Urban Watersheds: Geology, Contamination, and Sustainable Development - page 73

TABLE 3.2
Some Major Rivers of the United States

River Length (km) Drainage Area (km 2 ) Discharge (m 3 /s) Major Tributaries

Missouri 4,023 1,370,104 2158 Yellowstone River

Platte River

Mississippi 3,764 2,978,486 16,792 Illinois River

Ohio River
Missouri River
Arkansas River

Rio Grande 3,034 870,236 283 Pecos River

Arkansas 2,350 416,988 1,161 Canadian River

Cimarron River

Colorado 2,334 637,137 425 Green River

Columbia 1,854 668,217 7,504 Snake River

Ohio 1,569 525,768 7,957 Allegheny River

Monongahela River

St. Lawrence 1,223 1,025,635 9,854 Great Lakes

Ottawa River

Water resource regions

Pacific
northwest

Souris Red
Rainy

Missouri

Upper
Mississippi

Great Basin

Upper
Colorado

California

Lower
Colorado

Lower
Mississippi

Texas-Gulf

Hawaii

Alaska

Caribbean

FIGURE 3.10
Major watershed regions of the United States. (From United States Geological Survey, Science in your water-
shed, http://water.usgs.gov/wsc/map_index.html, 2010b.)

Table 2.4 lists the major urban areas of the United States and their associated geologic
environments. Table 3.3 contains the same urban areas as Table 2.4, but matches them with
their closest major surface water feature.
Of the 29 urban centers listed in Table 3.3, 12 are located near the ocean and 8 more are
located near bodies of water deep and wide enough to support large-scale shipping. The