Changing River Courses and Territorial Boundaries: A Historical Cartographic Analysis of Regional Conflict and Environmental Change

Abstract

This research explores the connection between rivers’ characteristics, transboundary status, territorial boundaries, regional conflicts, and environmental changes through an approach of historical cartography and geospatial analysis. River length, geographical location on continents, crossing country territories, and transboundary status were measured in the framework of descriptive statistics in order to classify rivers, distinguish differences between domestic and transboundary systems and find key rivers to analyze in depth historically. It was revealed that 79.7% of the rivers were domestic and 20.3% transboundary. Transboundary rivers are much longer on average than domestic ones (841.57 km vs. 557.22 km). Most of the rivers were classified as short, whereas medium and long rivers are more typical for transboundary systems. Yukon, Niger, Ganges, Paraná, and Indus became significant transboundary rivers, where Ganges and Indus were of particular importance for the study from an Indian perspective. It can be seen that the length and multinational nature of a river are important criteria in choosing the subject of case studies. But statistics alone is not enough to prove historical channel migration, change of territory and the causes of conflicts, which should be complemented by historical maps, images obtained from satellites, border agreements, information about erosion and other documents.