Rivers. Always a touchy point with software. The models are always wrong and the users demand so much.
The most likely reason that FT didn't find any rivers is that FT runs rivers at fairly low resolution. If the map area is 200 miles across then FT might be able to put almost one river simulation grid cell across the area. Not conducive to getting godo results. Pulling the area out and trying it in Wilbur is a good idea. There is a difficulty with this process, however, as you have found out.
FT uses an algorithm that generates information at all scales. To get a semi-plausible fractal forgery, the algorithm generates both positive and negative values that sum to zero on average. The BIG lumps during the initial generation process (positive lumps = continents, negative lumps = oceans) are modified with progressively smaller and smaller positive and negative lumps to get the final result. This process unfortunately gives little basins all over the place at all scales. Rivers run into these basins and stop because the river routing tool in Wilbur and FT both assume that the landscape flows downward to desired basins. See the attached image for an example of what rivers look like when routed from your MDR before and after fill basins.
To fix the problem with river routing in Wilbur, do a fill basins operation before finding rivers. It will fill in your lakes, but that's a minor nuisance that can be easily fixed (see http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/Fu...ol5/index.html for an example). The second image is the result of playing with the tutorial referenced above.
The river network shown is fairly plausible, but there are some minor issues. When you're routing rivers on a contour map, remember that rivers ALWAYS cross contour at right angles. It's the path of steepest descent. The rivers joining in the little basin in the middle-right of the map seem a little awkward. Otherwise a pretty good job. I'm too lazy to put that much effort into my work, though.
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