Yellow River (Huang He)

The Yellow River (also called the Huang He) is the second longest river in the People’s Republic of China and is the sixth longest in the world being about 3,010 miles (4,845 km) in length. In china it is known by both positive and negative nicknames. The positive one being “the cradle of China” because it is the birthplace of northern Chinese civilization and the negative one being “China’s sorrow” because of the flooding that occurs that causes a large amount of damage.

The Yellow River is called "the cradle of Chinese civilization", as its basin is the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilizations and was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. But frequent devastating flooding when the silt washed down from the upper reaches elevated the river bed in its lower course higher and higher, sometimes above the level of the surrounding fields, has also earned it the unenviable names "China's Sorrow" and "Scourge of the Sons of Han."

According to China Exploration and Research Society, the source of the Yellow River is at 34 29 31.1N, 96 20 24.6E near the eastern edge of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The source tribituaries drain into Gyaring Lake and Ngoring Lake on the western edge of Golog Prefecture high in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai Province in the far west of China. In the Zoige Basin along the boundary with Gansu Province, the Yellow River loops northwest and then northeast before turning south, creating the "Ordos Loop", and then flows generally eastward across northern China to the Gulf of Bohai, draining a basin of 752,443 square kilometres (290,520 sq mi) which nourishes 140 million people with drinking water and irrigation.

The river is commonly divided into three stages. These are roughly the northeast of the Tibetan Plateau, the Ordos Loop and the North China Plain. However, different scholars have different opinions on how the three stages are divided.This article adopts the division used by the Yellow River Conservancy Commission

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Ob-Irtysh River

The Ob-Irtysh river system makes up the seventh largest river in the world. The Irtysh is a tributary of the Ob and is actually longer than the Ob. These rivers are located in Siberia and together are about 3,364 miles (5,410 km) in length. They form a major basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia and the Altay Mountains.

The Ob-Irtysh rivers together form one of the largest river basins in the world, but also drain an area among the least populated and least known to outsiders. The rivers flow from the isolated mountain ranges of Central Asia (the ALTAI and Sayan ranges) across the sparsely populated Western Siberian Lowland to the Kara Sea, a subsidiary of the Arctic Ocean. Population density for the basin as a whole is only nine persons per square km, but there are several large cities clustered around the mineral wealth of the river’s southern watershed: Omsk on the Irtysh and Novosibirsk on the Ob are the largest cities in Siberia, along with Chelyabinsk, located on a tributary in the western part of the Ob-Irtysh Basin, in the Ural Mountains, which form the basin’s western boundary. The basin covers 1,159,274 square mi (2,972,497 square km)— roughly the same as the Mississippi basin—and lies mostly within Russia, though the southernmost courses of the Irtysh flow through northern Kazakhstan and small corners of Mongolia and Xinjiang, China.

Altogether the rivers and their tributaries connect about 17,000 miles (27,400 km) of navigable waterways, though most of these are frozen for much of the year. The Ob and Irtysh Rivers both have their headwaters in the highlands of the Altai Mountains, on the borders of Mongolia, where peaks reach heights of 13,200 ft (4,000 m) or more. This is one of the most remote spots on Earth, where four countries come together (Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China), over 3,000 mi (4,800 km) from the sea.

The two rivers start on different sides of this range, however, and do not meet up until both rivers have crossed most of the flat Siberian plains. The Irtysh is longer, but the Ob has more volume, and when they meet, at Khanty Mansiysk (a town named for the two dominant local indigenous groups), their course becomes sluggish and marshy. The far north of Russia is mostly flat and marshy, with little precipitation. Agriculture is severely limited by harsh climate and year-round permafrost. The Ob becomes divided into many ribbons, subject to enormous spring floods and dangerous ice flows during summer thaws. Here the river valley can at times reach 25 mi (40 km) wide.

The Ob enters the sea through the 600 mi (375 km) Gulf of Ob, a forked indentation of the Kara Sea. The region was sparsely populated by nomadic peoples (Mansy, Khanty, Nenets, and Samoyedic peoples) for centuries until Russians became attracted to the area for its “soft gold”: furs of numerous squirrels, otters, ermine, mink, and sable. Fortified wooden stockades were built at river junctions as trappers and merchants moved eastward, including such cities as Tobolsk (1587) on the Irtysh, and Salekhard (1595) on the Ob. This latter city is one of the furthest north in all of Russia, located close to where the Urals meet the Arctic at the Gulf of Ob and where the forests meet the Arctic tundra. Later cities were founded on the upper Ob (Narym and Tomsk) before the push for furs moved on eastward into Siberia. The large industrial cities of the south were built later, with the development of coal and iron ore industries, especially in the Kuznetsk Basin, and more recent pumping of oil near Surgut on the middle Ob. Because of the river’s swampiness and lengthy periods of ice cover (generally October to May), it is not used much for navigation.

There has been some harnessing of the great volumes of water flowing off of the Altai Mountains, notably at a hydropower station on the Irtysh in northeastern Kazakhstan, at Ust-Kamenogorsk, close to where the river (called the Ertix) flows out of Mongolia and into the large Zaysan lake. This region is one of Kazakhstan’s most industrialized and holds a large portion of its population. The lower parts of the rivers are spawning grounds for sturgeon, salmon and whitefish, and the Ob estuary forms one of the largest fishing industries in the Russian Arctic.

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Congo River

The Congo River (also known as the Zaire River) is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of 230 m (750 ft). It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon. Additionally, its overall length of 4,700 km (2,920 mi) makes it the ninth longest river.

Its drainage basin covers 4,014,500 square kilometres (1,550,000 sq mi). The Congo's discharge at its mouth ranges from 23,000 cubic metres per second (810,000 cu ft/s) to 75,000 cubic metres per second (2,600,000 cu ft/s), with an average of 41,000 cubic metres per second (1,400,000 cu ft/s).

The river and its tributaries flow through the Congo rainforest, the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, behind the Amazon; the third-largest drainage basin of any river, behind the Amazon and Río de la Plata rivers; and is one of the deepest rivers in the world, at depths greater than 230 m (750 ft).Because large sections of the river basin lie above and below the equator, its flow is stable, as there is always at least one part of the river experiencing a rainy season.

The Congo gets its name from the ancient Kingdom of Kongo which inhabited the lands at the mouth of the river. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, both countries lying along the river's banks, are named after it. Between 1971 and 1997 the government of then-Zaire called it the Zaire River.

The sources of the Congo are in the highlands and mountains of the East African Rift, as well as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru, which feed the Lualaba River, which then becomes the Congo below Boyoma Falls. The Chambeshi River in Zambia is generally taken as the source of the Congo in line with the accepted practice worldwide of using the longest tributary, as with the Nile River.

The Congo flows generally northwards from Kisangani just below the Boyoma falls, then gradually bends southwestwards, passing by Mbandaka, joining with the Ubangi River, and running into the Pool Malebo (Stanley Pool). Kinshasa (formerly Léopoldville) and Brazzaville are on opposite sides of the river at the Pool, where the river narrows and falls through a number of cataracts in deep canyons (collectively known as the Livingstone Falls), running by Matadi and Boma, and into the sea at the small town of Muanda.

The Congo River Basin is one of the distinct physiographic sections of the larger Mid-African province, which in turn is part of the larger African massive physiographic division.

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Amur River (Heilong Jiang)

The Amur River (also called the Heilong Jiang) is the world’s ninth longest river and is also the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. This River flows across northeast Asia to the Strait of Tartary, where it finally drains into the Pacific Ocean. It was has been called the” Black River” because it was sacred to the Manchu and the Qing Dynasty and it is also a symbol of Russian-Chinese relations.

It rises in the hills of western Manchuria at the confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka River and the Ergune River, at an elevation of 303 metres (994 ft).It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes a great arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres (250 mi), receiving many tributaries and passing many small towns. At Huma, it is joined by a major tributary, the Huma River. Afterwards it continues to flow south until between the cities of Blagoveschensk (Russia) and Heihe (China), it widens significantly as it is joined by the Zeya River, one of its most important tributaries.

The Amur arcs to the east and turns southeast again at the confluence with the Bureya River, then does not receive another significant tributary for nearly 250 kilometres (160 mi) before its confluence with its largest tributary, the Songhua River, at Tongjiang. At the confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk, where it joins the Ussuri River and ceases to define the Russia-China border. Now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres (120 mi) and the river again flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun River. Shortly after the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) downstream of which it flows into the Strait of Tartary /Tatar Strait.

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Lena River

The Lena River is Russia’s greatest river and being approximately 2,800 miles (4,400 km), it also the world’s tenth longest river. This river has seven different tributary rivers that join with it and they are the Kirenga River, the Olyokyma River, the Vitim River, the Amga River, the Aldan River, the Vilyuy River and the Maya River. It has the unique distinction of the River who appears to be the largest river in the world when looked at with a Mercator

The majority of researchers believe that the name of the river Lena has been acquired from the original Even-Evenk name Elyu-Ene, which means "the Large River". "Lena" is also a popular name for women in Russia.

The river around 1890

According to folktales related a century after the fact, in the years 1620-23 a party of Russian fur hunters under the leadership of Demid Pyanda sailed up Lower Tunguska,and discovered the proximity of Lena and either carried their boats there or built new ones. In 1623 Pyanda explored some 2400 kilometers of the river from its upper rocky part to its wide flow in the central Yakutia. In 1628 Vasily Bugor and ten men reached the Lena, collected yasak from the natives and founded Kirinsk in 1632. In 1631 the voyevoda of Yeniseisk sent Pyotr Beketov and twenty men to found an ostrog at Yakutsk (founded in 1632). From Yakutsk other expeditions spread out to the south and east. The Lena delta was reached in 1633.

Baron Eduard Von Toll, accompanied by Alexander von Bunge, carried out an expedition to the Lena delta area and the islands of New Siberia on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1885. They explored the Lena delta with its multitude of arms that flow towards the Polar sea. Then in spring 1886 they investigated the New Siberian Islands and the Yana River and its tributaries. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov took his alias, Lenin, from the river Lena, possibly because he was exiled to the Central Siberian Plateau.

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Yenisei River

The Yenisei is thought of as the greatest river system that flows in the Arctic Ocean and at 3,445 miles (5,539 km), is the fifth longest river in the world. It is in Russia and is mainly in the Siberian region. This river includes several hydro-electric dams that fuel a significant part of Russia’s primary industry.

The upper reaches, subject to rapids and flooding, pass through sparsely populated areas. The middle section is controlled by a series of massive hydroelectric dams fuelling significant Russian primary industry. Partly built by gulag labor in Soviet times, industrial contamination remains a serious problem in an area hard to police. Moving on through sparsely-populated taiga, the Yenisei swells with numerous tributaries and finally reaches the Kara Sea in desolate tundra where it is icebound for more than half the year.

The maximum depth of the Yenisei River is 80 feet (24 m) and the average depth is 45 feet (14 m). The depth of river outflow is 106 feet (32 m) and inflow is 101 feet (31 m).

Ancient nomadic tribes such as the Ket people and the Yugh people lived along its banks. The Ket, numbering about 1000, are the only survivors today of those who originally lived throughout central southern Siberia near the river banks. Their extinct relatives included the Kotts, Assans, Arins, Baikots, and Pumpokols who lived further upriver to the south. The modern Ket lived in the eastern middle areas of the river before being assimilated politically into Russia during the 17th through 19th centuries.

Russians first reached the upper Yenisei in 1605, travelling from the Ob River, up the Ket River, portaging and then down the Yenisei as far as the Sym River. In 1607 they went east up the Angara River and in 1608 south towards Krasnoyarsk. Yeniseisk at the Ket-Angara junction was founded in 1619 and Krasnoyarsk upriver in 1628. In 1607 the lower Yenisei was reached from Mangazeya, with the founding Turukhansk at the mouth of the Lower Tunguska. The mouth of the Yenisey was reached in 1610 and the Stony Tunguska some time before 1626.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire agreed to divide Asia along a line that followed the Yenisei River to the border of China, and then along the border of China and the Soviet Union, the northern and western borders of Afghanistan, and the border between Iran and India (what is now Pakistan was then part of India).

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Missouri-Mississippi River

The Missouri-Mississippi River system at about 3,900 miles (6,300 km) in length, it is the fourth longest river in the world. Its average discharge of water makes it the tenth largest river in the world. It is the only river located in North America that made the top ten longest rivers list. Also, its name comes from an Ojibwe word meaning “Great River”. About 98.5 percent of this river is located within the United States, the rest resides in Canada.

For at least 10,000 years, Native Americans have lived along the Mississippi and its tributaries. Most were hunter-gatherers or herders, but some such as the Mound builders formed prolific agricultural societies. The arrival of Europeans in the 1500s forever changed the native way of life as first explorers, then settlers, ventured into the basin in increasing numbers. The river served first as barrier – forming borders for New Spain, New France, and the early United States – then as vital transportation artery and communications link. In the 19th century, during the height of Manifest Destiny, the Mississippi and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for pioneers partaking in the western expansion of the United States.

Formed from thick layers of this river's silt deposits, the Mississippi River Valley is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the country and as a result came the rise of the river's storied steamboat era. During the American Civil War, the Mississippi's capture by Union forces marked a turning point towards victory because of this very importance as a route of trade and travel, not least to the Confederacy. Because of substantial growth of cities, and the larger ships and barges that have supplanted riverboats, the decades following the 1900s saw massive engineering works applied to the river system, such as the often in-combination construction of levees, locks and dams.

Since modern development of the basin began, the Mississippi has also seen its share of pollution and environmental problems – most notably large volumes of agricultural runoff, which has led to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone off the Delta. In recent years, the river has shown a steady shift towards the Atchafalaya River channel in the Delta; a course change would prove disastrous to seaports such as New Orleans. A system of dikes and gates has so far held the Mississippi at bay, but due to fluvial processes the shift becomes more likely each year.

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Yangtze River (Chang Jiang)

The Yangtze River (also called the Chang Jiang) is about 3,915 miles (6,380 km) in length and is considered the third longest river in the world. It is located in the People’s Republic of China and it flows from its source in the Qinghai Province, to the East China Sea at Shanghai. Because it is the largest river in this region it is important economically, historically and culturally. It also id the home of the world’s largest hydro-electric power system, the Three Gorges Dam.

The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng is the longest river in Asia. The Yangtze drains one-fifth of China's land area and its river basin is home to one-third of China's population. Along with the Yellow River, the Yangtze is the most important river in the history, culture and economy of China. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of China's GDP. The river is an important physical and cultural dividing line between North and South China. Chinese living north of the Yangtze speak varying dialects of Mandarin. Most of the provinces south of the river have native Sinitic languages that are unintelligible to Mandarin-speakers.

The Yangtze River flows through a wide array of ecosystems and is itself habitat to several endemic and endangered species including the Yangtze River dolphin (now extinct), Chinese alligator, and the Yangtze sturgeon. For thousands of years, man has used the river for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world. In recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves. A stretch of the Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Amazon River

The Amazon is approximately 3,980 miles (6,400km) in length and is known as the second longest river in the world. It passes though seven countries in South America and is actually the largest river in terms of volume and flow. In fact, it accounts for one-fifth of the world’s river flow. For these reasons scientist dispute that it should be considered the longest river in the world as well, but this title is not yet theirs.

The Amazon Basin, the largest drainage basin in the world, covers about 40 percent of South America, an area of approximately 7,050,000 square kilometres (2,720,000 sq mi). It gathers its waters from 5 degrees north latitude to 20 degrees south latitude. Its most remote sources are found on the inter-Andean plateau, just a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.

The Amazon River and its tributaries are characterized by extensive forested areas that become flooded every rainy season. Every year the river rises more than 9 metres (30 ft), flooding the surrounding forests, known as várzea ("flooded forests"). The Amazon's flooded forests are the most extensive example of this habitat type in the world. In an average dry season, 110,000 square kilometres (42,000 sq mi) of land are water-covered, while in the wet season, the flooded area of the Amazon Basin rises to 350,000 square kilometres (140,000 sq mi).

The quantity of water released by the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean is enormous: up to 300,000 cubic metres per second (11,000,000 cu ft/s) in the rainy season, with an average of 209,000 cubic metres per second (7,400,000 cu ft/s) from 1973 to 1990.The Amazon is responsible for about 20% of the Earth's freshwater entering the ocean. The river pushes a vast plume of freshwater into the ocean. The plume is about 400 kilometres (250 mi) long and between 100 and 200 kilometres (62 and 120 mi) wide. The freshwater, being lighter, overrides the salty ocean, diluting the salinity and altering the color of the ocean surface over an area up to 1,000,000 square miles (2,600,000 km2) large. For centuries ships have reported freshwater near the Amazon's mouth yet well out of sight of land in what otherwise seemed to be the open ocean.

The Atlantic has sufficient wave and tidal energy to carry most of the Amazon's sediments out to sea, thus the Amazon does not form a true delta. The great deltas of the world are all in relatively protected bodies of water while the Amazon empties directly into the turbulent Atlantic.

The tidal bore is the reason the Amazon does not have a protruding delta; the ocean rapidly carries away the vast volume of silt carried by the Amazon, making it impossible for a delta to grow past the shoreline.

There is a natural water union between the Amazon and the Orinoco basins, the so-called Casiquiare canal. The Casiquiare is a river distributary of the upper Orinoco, which flows southward into the Rio Negro, which in turn flows into the Amazon. The Casiquiare is the largest river on the planet that links two major river systems, a so called bifurcation.

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Nile River (World's Longest River)

The Nile has long been considered the longest river in the world. It is about 4,135 miles (6,650 km) in length and flows in a northward direction to where it finally drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It passes through ten countries on the continent of Africa, where it has been a main source of water and life since ancient times.

The Nile has two major tributaries, the White Nile and Blue Nile. The latter is the source of most of the water and fertile soil. The former is the longer. The White Nile rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source being as-yet undetermined, and located in either Rwanda or Burundi. It flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia at 12°02′09″N 037°15′53″E and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

The northern section of the river flows almost entirely through desert, from Sudan into Egypt, a country whose civilization has depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along riverbanks. The Nile ends in a large delta that empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

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