Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers

Requested move at Talk:Howard Creek (disambiguation)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Howard Creek (disambiguation) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Question
Why is it that all streams are categorized as rivers when rivers are only a type of stream? Like the stream article claims, long, large streams are usually called rivers while smaller, less voluminous and more intermittent streams are known as streamlets, brooks or creeks. It seems to me that there should be categories for each type of stream rather than categorizing every stream as a river which seems erroneous to me. Volcanoguy 03:28, 9 January 2024 (UTC)


 * While I think categorizing by type of stream would add too much ambiguity (since what is called a "river" in one place could be considered a "creek" in another, and there are even rivers that flow into creeks, like the Wallkill River which flows into the Rondout Creek), it might make sense to change "Category: Rivers of" to "Category: Streams of". As you point out, "stream" is the correct umbrella term that covers rivers, creeks, brooks, arroyos, etc. Thoughts? Shannon [ Talk ] 18:35, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Condsider that Econfina River in Florida has a watershed of 239 square miles, while Econfina Creek, also in Florida, has a watershed of 275 square miles. I remember one website that remarked that Econfina River was a creek, while Econfina Creek was a river. "Rivers", "streams", "creeks", "runs", "branches", etc. often overlap in watershed area, flow volume, and other measures, and the choice of name is often arbitrary, influenced by local custom. Donald Albury 01:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

River AfD
Your input at Articles for deletion/Wolastoq is welcome. The river flows between Canada and the United States. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Watersheds of the world
The Wayback links to the reference text Watersheds of the world : ecological value and vulnerability in this WikiProject guide are not usable. A scanned copy of the book can be borrowed through the IA: I recommend that we update the links to reference the scanned copy of the book. - DutchTreat (talk) 12:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Link updated. DutchTreat (talk) 13:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Rubicon
An article which may be of interest to members of this project&mdash;Rubicon&mdash;has been proposed for merging with Crossing the Rubicon. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

River regime
Hi,

I am currently editing an article that might interest you, but more importantly I kind of have a dilemma what approach I should take.

So the article in question is River regime. It is not a part of your project as it firstly included only the definition in geology and the other, completely different topic that I set out to expand is about the annual fluctuations of rivers' discharge, sort of like climate is for weather. So these are two completely different topics, so i guess they should be split into two articles with this second being called discharge regime, which is also used. So I have made a template hydrograph and set out to expand the article (see my sandbox page). However, I found little sources that focused on the topic in detail globally and none of those classifications seemed to be detailed and particularly good. The part around the Alps (Slovenia and Austria, perhaps also France, but sadly, I don't speak French) seems a lot more developed than other parts and the distinction is also very detailed. Nival/nivo-glacial and glacial regimes are differentiated down to a single month while I failed to find a more detailed description for pluvial regimes than the distinction into three splits (temperate pluvial, mediterranean, and tropical pluvial – misleading as it also appears in China and together with a nival peak even in Russia).

So I set out to erase this inconsistency and I made some special notation that would be objective, detailed and quick to convey the information. I have seen Wiktionary using its own transcription for some Chinese varieties, so I Figured that would not be such a problem. However, then these common names such as glacial and nival also needed special distinctions as in Asia, it happens that the nival and pluvial peak coincide in August or July, which does not occur in Europe; rivers so far towards the poles that they get most of the water from glaciers also needed to fit somewhere, which lead to the current situation where I find myself making more and more subjective decisions, far more than what is probably acceptable for Wikipedia. And I don't want to continue onwards knowing that the edit would probably get reversed anyhow. If you find any other classification that could be used, please let me know.

I think that developing a such system for global classification would be really beneficial and this notation could then also be added to the infoboxes for rivers, because if only what has been published elsewhere is used, the whole topic would be really eurocentric with many different rivers with pluvial peaks (i.e. all those rivers rising in tropical, temperate and most of dry climates) fitting into one of the only three categories while having 10 different simple regimes for rivers in the Alpine region. I have found a source which allows for a quick addition of the regimes and from it, a special article for each of these major groups could also be made as there are trends that can be identified (something similar as in the second part of the sandbox page).

Let me know what you think about this or if I should ask about the issue elsewhere. Garygo golob (talk) 15:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think this is a useful article, but I suggest caution to avoid over-simplification of a complex subject. I agree with your assessment of the subjectivity of selecting an appropriate range of regimes for use in the infoboxes of river articles.  The article presently relies heavily on a single source; and, as you suggest, additional sources may offer alternative variant definitions.  The related time of concentration article describes an engineering concept used for translating anticipated snowmelt or precipitation intensity into estimated peak flows for smaller watersheds, although terrain and climatic variation over distances introduce complexities making it impractical for larger rivers where reliance is often placed on historical flow measurements to predict return periods of peak flow events.  Some arid climates have channel forming discharge events (peak flows) at much lesser frequency than suggested, and human influences including climate change, pumping groundwater from a river's underflow, or operation of dams for hydropower, flood control, or water storage to sustain dry season flow are becoming increasingly significant. Thewellman (talk) 20:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem with developing your own scheme for classifying rivers is that it is original research. We can only use content in Wikipedia that is based on what has been published in reliable sources. I run into this problem every once in a while (including this week), where being able to organize content in an article on some scheme or classification would be useful, but I can't find decent sources that support such a scheme or classification. All you can do is summarize what reliable sources say, you cannot go beyond that. Donald Albury 20:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:New River (North Carolina)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:New River (North Carolina) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 14:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

"Macra (rivers)" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Macra_(rivers)&redirect=no Macra (rivers)] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Caschei River
I see quite a few scholarly biological articles refer to the Caschei River, a river in southern Ethiopia (possibly between Lake Turkana and Lake Chew Bahir). Can anyone provide any more details about this river? --Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 00:03, 15 June 2024 (UTC)