Convergent Surface Water Distributions in U.S. Cities

Earth’s surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their sur-rounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of streams, we compared the surface water of 100 US cities with their surrounding undeveloped land