Western Water Atlas · Oct 13, 2026 publication snapshot

Water makes places possible

Western Water Atlas is an explanatory map of California, the Southwest and the Colorado River’s connected headwaters and Mexican reach. It puts mountains, rivers and reservoirs beside the pumps, canals, institutions and choices that make water available to communities, farms and ecosystems.

Built for curious readers, students and people who want to inspect the evidence behind a water story. Start with a place; compare its physical connections, current conditions and separately dated annual accounts. Tribal sovereignty and downstream interests are part of that geography, not leftover categories.

What this map does—and does not do

The atlas explains selected systems using qualified public evidence. It is not an operations console, forecast, water-rights adjudication, parcel-level service guarantee or complete account of western water. A highlighted connection does not measure source-to-tap delivery. A station snow reading does not forecast future supply.

Publication and authorship

Owner: David. Research, implementation and cartography: Hermes, with primary-source attribution in Data and reproducible rules in Methods. Publication snapshot: October13,2026. Early public preview, shared with friends for feedback.

Privacy

No accounts, analytics, paid basemap or visitor-time agency requests. Map-return state stays in your browser’s session storage. The map’s agency data are precomputed static files; agency outages do not affect ordinary exploration.