Delta Braid Network

Delta Braid Network is an original illustration set in Ganges Delta, Bangladesh. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is tropical savanna — a pronounced dry season.

A branching web of silver-brown tidal channels forks toward the sea, seen from high above. Green islands between them are quilted with tiny paddy plots and dotted hamlets. Sediment plumes fan out where the channels meet open water.

Why does a river split into many mouths at the sea?

A river splitting repeatedly instead of running to one mouth means it is depositing faster than it can cut — the classic sign of a river losing energy as it meets the sea. The brown is suspended sediment from a mountain range far upstream. Field plots that small mean intense hand cultivation on land that is fertile precisely because it floods.

Terpano is a free daily geography puzzle. You study one original illustration, place a pin on a borderless terrain map, and see how close you were. There is no account and no sign-up; progress stays in your own browser. It plays in 11 languages.