 |
|
| News | Events | Sites | Database | Knowledge Base | Forum |
|
FACTS ABOUT RIVER BASINS The Nile River is the longest river in the world. From its major source, Lake Victoria in east central Africa, the White Nile flows generally north through Uganda and into Sudan where it meets the Blue Nile at Khartoum, which rises in the Ethiopian highlands. From the confluence of the White and Blue Nile, the river continues to flow northwards into Egypt and on to the Mediterranean Sea. From Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea the length of the Nile is 5,584 km. From its remotest headstream, the Ruvyironza River in Burundi, the river is 6,671 km long. The river basin has an area of more than 3,349,000 km2. The largest river basin in the world is that drained by the Amazon. It covers about 6,145,186 km2. The Amazon is the river that carries the most water in the world. In Brazil, an average of 120,000 m3 of water flows from the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean every second. The widest river in the world is the Plate, with a distance of 221.5 km between Cape San Antonio and Punta del Este. The top three large basins in terms of fish species are the Amazon with more than 3,000 species, the Congo with 700, and the Mississippi with 375. The most forested basins are the Amazon (73.4%) and Orinoco (50.5%) basins in South America, the Congo (44.0%) and Ogooue (75,1%) in Central Africa, basins in Papua New Guinea and Kalimantan, Indonesia, basins in Southeast Asia, and basins in northern latitudes with low population densities, such as the Yukon and Mackenzie Basins in North America, the Lena and Pechora in Russia, or the North Dvina in Europe. The top five basins with the greatest percentage of their area classified as dryland include the Ural Basin in Russia and Kazakhstan, the Guadalquivir in Spain, the Yaqui in Mexico and the United States, the Tapti in India, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Iran, Syria and Turkey. Today, there are more than 45,000 large dams (more than 15 meters high) in the world, with more than half of these in China alone.
Information from: Source: UNESCO Water Portal, April 2005
|