Description about the river. Characteristics of rivers: main parameters. The widest rivers in the world

Today, no one can say for sure how many rivers there are in the world. After all, everything also depends on what can be considered a river and what can be considered a stream. So, for example, if you add up the length of all the rivers in Russia, you get more than 8 million kilometers. Their total number, if you count large and small, is close to 2.5 million. There are no more than 50 largest rivers on the entire globe, and their total length is about 200,000 km. But what does the source and mouth of the river consist of?

Geographical significance of the river

The river is a stream fresh water, which moves in a fixed channel and is replenished mainly due to precipitation. Before you understand the characteristics of freshwater streams, you need to remember a few key terms:

• A channel is a depression along which the flow of water from a river follows. It is usually fixed, sinuous in shape with alternating small and deep places. Due to geographical changes or other factors, it may change, leaving behind holes and depressions. So, for example, in India there is the Kosi River, which makes its way almost every year. new way, washing away everything that comes in its way.

• The source is the beginning of the river. It could be a spring, a melting glacier, any other body of water, or the confluence of two water streams.
• The mouth is the place where a river ends, whether it flows into the sea, ocean or other water stream.
• River system- this is not only the river itself, but also its tributaries.
• The river basin is certain territory, from which all the water is collected. All basins are separated by watersheds, and their role is played by hills.

Main parameters of river characteristics

The main characteristics of rivers are their size, flow speed, flow, fall and type of food.

The difference between the heights of the source and the mouth is called the fall. The higher the fall, the more speed currents in the river.

Current speed is measured in m/sec. It will not be the same everywhere; the areas have different terrain and the slope of the riverbed is different.

Water consumption shows how many cubic meters passed in 1 second through cross section beds.

The river is fed in several ways: by rainwater, after melting ice, from underground springs and glaciers. Rivers located in the tropics are fed by rain. Snow feeding near rivers temperate zones and located in the northern hemisphere, and have glacial mountain rivers. There are several main rivers:

1. Equatorial - only with rain all year round.
2. Subequatorial - the river is fed by rain, but it is uneven and seasonal.
3. Subtropical - rain with a rise in river level in winter and shallowing in summer.
4. Subarctic is snow feeding, which ensures a rise in water levels in summer and a sharp shallowing in winter, when most of The rivers freeze.
5. Ozerny - the river is fully nourished all year round and does not depend in any way on other types of nutrition.
6. Mountain - in high mountains At night, the rivers become shallow, and during the day they are replenished due to the melting of glaciers and snow.

You can also very often hear about the river regime. But not everyone knows what a river regime is. What does it depend on? The answer is very simple, the river regime is the course of long-term, seasonal and daily changes in the river flow in the channel. Changes can happen very quickly, it all depends on where and under what conditions the river flows.

Rivers flow through the plains, flow down from the mountains, and during their entire life they can change their path several thousand times, become shallower or, conversely, become more full-flowing.

Features of river flow

And the mouth of the river is already known, but what are the features of the water flow in each of them? After all, it is known that there are rivers with standing water and a quiet current, but there are those where the water runs at such a speed that it can demolish any, even the largest, obstacle in its path.

The nature of the flow and speed of the river depend on the topography, slope and fall of the water. On the plains, river flows are wide, calm, and their fall slope is small. Such rivers include the Volga, Danube, Dnieper, Neman. But there are also those that occur among mountain heights. They are distinguished by turbulent and strong flows; on their way there are many rapids, and sometimes high waterfalls. Such rivers have a huge fall, which means that their flow pattern is completely different. Such streams include the Terek, Rioni, Tigris and Yangtze.

The full flow, regime, and sometimes nutrition of rivers depend on the climate. In wet conditions rivers remain full at any time of the year, but in a dry climate they very often dry up and are fed only by precipitation, and there is not very much of it in a year.

Mountain rivers are cold because they are fed by melting glaciers located on the peaks. But if you walk along the entire riverbed, then at the very end the water can be very warm, since during its journey it heats up under the scorching rays of the sun.

What is a mountain and lowland river?

We have already managed to figure out what a river regime is, but what type of rivers are there? After all, they can simply run among the plains or descend from high mountains.

Lowland rivers are water streams passing through flat terrain with small slopes and flow rates. Such rivers flow in developed valleys with a winding bed, where reaches and rifts alternate.

Mountain rivers originate in the mountains or foothills. They have steep slopes and rocky riverbeds cluttered with debris rocks. Such rivers are characterized by large slopes and flow speeds, and shallow depths. Often along the path of these rivers there are waterfalls and rapids, and erosion processes also predominate.

There are also mountain-plain rivers that begin far in the mountains, after which they gradually turn into a quiet lowland river.

5 largest rivers in the world

Every person knows the name of the largest rivers in the world. List of the 5 largest and deep rivers The world is led by the Amazon, which is considered the heart of South America. More recently, it was considered 2nd on the list of the largest after the Nile. But after scientists accepted the small source of the Ucayali as the true beginning of the river, it began to be considered the longest. Its length is more than 7 thousand km.

In second place was the African Nile River. It is considered a sacred river, since only thanks to it can people living in the harsh and very dry climate of Africa survive. During the rainy season, the river floods, allowing the population of Africa to engage in agriculture, rice is grown on its banks. The length of the second largest river in the world is just over 6800 km, and the river basin has an area of ​​more than 3 million square meters. km.

The Yangtze is another large river in the world, which is considered the main deep-water stream of Eurasia. This river can be considered a mountain-plain river, since it originates in the Tibetan Plateau, then passes through the Sino-Tibetan Mountains and then flows into the Sichuan Basin. The length of this very deep river is about 6.3 thousand km, and the basin area is about 1.8 million square meters. km.

The Yellow River, or Yellow River, is another major river in the world, with its source in the mountains of Tibet. Its length is about 5 thousand km, and the basin area is 700 thousand square meters. km.

The names of rivers located in Russia can be found on the map. Among them there is one that is included in the list of the 5 largest - this is the Ob. Its length is slightly more than 5,400 km, and the basin area is almost the same as that of the Nile - 3 million square meters. km. This water flow originates in Russia, and then passes through Kazakhstan and ends its path in China.

The world's major rivers have great importance for industrial and economic development states in whose territory they flow. Rivers give life-giving moisture to people. In addition, there are a lot of fish in the rivers, which feed not only animals, but also humans.

List of the smallest rivers in the world

But not only large rivers exists on the planet. There are also the smallest ones, which have their own significance for the people living on its banks. The smallest rivers:

• Reprua - this river flows in Abkhazia, and its length is only 18 meters. In addition, it is considered the coldest river on the Black Sea coast.
• Kovasselva - this water stream is located on the Norwegian island of Hitra, and its length is no more than 20 meters.

Amazing rivers of the world

The characteristics of rivers are not only information about whether they are large or small in size. There are also unusual and amazing water streams on the planet that attract attention with their originality.

Caño Cristales is the most colorful river located in Colombia. Most often, locals call it the river of five colors. The river acquires such a bright and unusual variety of colors thanks to the algae living in its water. If you look at the water in it, you might think that a rainbow fell into the water.

Citarum is the most dirty river on the planet. It is located in Indonesia, and is dirty because more than 5 million people live in its basin. People dump all their waste into its waters. If you look at the river from afar, you won’t even immediately understand what it is; you get the feeling that you’re looking at a landfill.

Congo is the most deep river on the planet. It flows in Central Africa, in some places its depth reaches 230 meters, and perhaps even more.

El Rio Vinegre is the most acidic river. It flows past the Purace volcano in Colombia. Its water contains more than 11 parts of sulfuric acid and 9 parts of hydrochloric acid. There can be no living creatures in this river.

Life in rivers: plants

The characteristics of rivers are not only nutrition, length and other parameters, but also animals and plants. After all, every water stream, be it the largest or smallest, has its own life. In every fast or quiet river, many plants have found their home, which adapt to life in a particular stream, with its flow characteristics, water temperature and other parameters.

River plants can be divided into 5 main groups:

1. Plants found in water and on land. They begin their growth at the bottom of the river, and their upper part rises above the water. These include reed, reed, horsetail, cattail and arrowhead.
2. Plants whose roots are attached to the bottom and whose leaves float on the surface of the water. Such plants are floating pondweed.
3. Plants with roots at the bottom, whose leaves remain in the water, are urut and common pondweed.
4. Plants are floating and have no roots at the bottom. One such plant is duckweed.
5. Plants that live in the middle layer of water - hornwort, filamentous algae and elodea.

River life: fauna

Characteristics of rivers are also animals that cannot exist anywhere except in water. Not only does it live in rivers a large number of species of fish, but also other living organisms:

• Plankton are living organisms that live in the water column; they seem to float in a body of water and surrender to the power of the current. Plankton is the main food for many fish.
• Benthos. This group includes bottom organisms.
• Nekton are actively moving animals that can overcome currents. Today, there are more than 20 thousand species of nekton, these include fish, squid, cetaceans, pinnipeds, turtles and others.
• Neuston - animals and plant organisms, living on the surface of water bordering the atmosphere.
• Pleiston is animal and plant organisms that are semi-submerged in water, i.e., capable of living simultaneously in both aquatic and air environments.
• Epineuston includes organisms that live on the surface film.
• Hyponeuston - organisms associated with the surface film, but living underneath it.
• Periphyton are organisms that live on the surface of objects submerged in water.

Mammals also live in the rivers: beavers, otters, muskrats, and reptiles: turtles, snakes, crocodiles.

How are rivers used?

Even in ancient times, people believed that water is life. They often built houses on the banks of rivers and reservoirs to make it easier for them to carry out everyday life. Using the river helps not only to do household chores, but also to run your household. Water from rivers is used for drinking, having been purified beforehand, used to prepare food for themselves and animals, and used for watering plants.

Today, water from rivers is purified at special stations and supplied through pipes to homes in large cities. Rivers are also often used for timber rafting, as a way to travel over long distances. They swim and fish in the rivers. Rivers are also very beautiful landscapes, because it’s nice to sit on the banks and enjoy the fresh, humid air while admiring the surroundings.

How much water is needed for industrial enterprises that also build closer to rivers?! Thanks to this proximity, any enterprise will be able to draw water from the reservoir. In distant countries - Africa or South America- where the climate is very dry and the rivers often dry up, the main source of drinking for wild animals is these rivers, even if they are dry in some places. But during the rainy season they become full again.

Without rivers, our planet would not be as beautiful and real. They, like water sleeves, entwine Earth and give life-giving moisture, but the task of humanity is to make every effort to preserve their purity and beauty.

Nobody knows the exact number of rivers. It all depends on what exactly is considered a river and what is just a stream.

For example, in Russia there are 130 thousand rivers whose length exceeds 10 km. If we count water streams less than 10 km long as rivers, then there are over 3 million of them in Russia!

There are more than 50 large rivers with a channel length of over 1000 km on the entire planet. And their total length is 180 thousand km.

Geographical feature (meaning)

R eka - a stream of fresh water flowing in a relatively fixed channel and replenished mainly by precipitation.

First, you need to remember a few terms:

.bed- a depression through which water flows. The channel is usually fixed, has a winding shape with alternating shallow places (rifts) and deeper places (reaches). Due to geological changes, natural phenomena a river can change its course, leaving holes and depressions - meanders. For example, the Kosi River in India carves a new channel for itself every year, washing away villages and villages along its path.

The meanders of the riverbed are called bends, and in deep-water rivers the channel line is called a fairway. By the way, the Piana River is considered the most winding river in the world. It flows through the Nizhny Novgorod region in Russia. The length of the river is 400 km, while the distance from source to mouth in a straight line is only 30 km.

. Source- the beginning of the river. The source can be a spring, a melting glacier, another body of water (swamp, sea, lake) or the confluence of two rivers.

. Estuary- the end of a river, the place where it flows into the sea, ocean or other river.

. River system- a river with all its tributaries.

. River basin- the area from which a river and its tributaries collect water. River basins are separated by watersheds. Most often, mountains and hills play the role of watersheds.

Characteristics of rivers

The most important characteristics of a river are its size, fall, flow speed, water flow, flow, and type of nutrition.

By falling rivers are called the difference in height between the source and the mouth. The higher the fall, the higher the flow speed, and therefore the greater the possibility of obtaining energy.

Current speed rivers are measured in m/sec. In different parts of the river, the speed can be different, it depends on the terrain and the slope of the riverbed.

Water consumption shows how many cubic meters of water passes through the cross section of the channel in 1 second. Water consumption over a long period of time (six months, a year) is called runoff. The Amazon is considered the most abundant river in the world. In Russia, these are the Yenisei and Lena.

Nutrition rivers occur in different ways. There are 4 groups of rivers based on this criterion: rain, snow, underground and glacial. Rain power tropical rivers receive snow, temperate and northern rivers receive snow, and mountain rivers receive glacial water. But most rivers have a mixed type of feeding, replenishing water supplies from several sources at once.

Types of river mouths

An estuary is a place where a river flows into another body of water. Depending on the shape of this part of the river, two types of mouths are distinguished: delta and estuary (estuary, lip).

(The image shows a model of the river mouth)

Delta formed by a branched system of branches and ducts. Rivers flowing into calm bodies of water form deltas of gigantic size. The largest delta is near the Ganges, it covers an area of ​​105.6 thousand square meters. km.

Estuary- this is the mouth of the river in the shape of a funnel, expanding towards the sea. Estuaries are formed. If the part of the sea adjacent to the mouth has great depth. In Russia, the largest estuaries are the Gulf of Ob (Ob River) and the Yenisei Bay (Yenisei River).

The longest rivers in the world

(Amazon river)

The longest river in the world - Amazon(6800km). Located in South America. Its origins are in the Andes. The Amazon crosses the entire continent from west to east and flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

Almost the entire course of the Amazon and its tributaries is located in latitudes where humid tropical jungle, therefore this river is also the deepest in the world.

The second longest river is Nile(6695km), located in Africa. The sources of the Nile are in the mountains, the river flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is famous for its floods.

Largest river North America — Mississippi with a tributary of the Missouri (6400 km). The sources are in the mountains and flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

The longest rivers in Asia - Yangtze(5800km) and Yellow River (4845km). Both flow through China from west to east and empty into the Pacific Ocean.

The widest rivers in the world

A river is considered wide if the width of its bed is more than 150 meters.

(River La Plata, on the horizon the city of the same name La Plata)

The widest river in the world is considered La Plata, or Silver River. It flows on the border of Uruguay and Argentina. The width of the channel is 220 km! But with such width, La Plata has little depth. This river is home to turtles and one of the rare species dolphins, which is called La Plata.

The widest river in Russia is Ob. The width of its channel is 60 km. Amur is in second place (50 km), Lena is in third (30 km). Volga takes only 4th place (27.5 km).

The longest river in Russia

(Ice drift on the Lena River, Yakutia)

The longest river in Russia is Lena(4400km). The source is a swamp located near Lake Baikal. The Lena flows through Siberia and flows into the Laptev Sea. Tributaries: Vitim, Vilyui, Olekma and Aldan.

INTRODUCTION

Since time immemorial, rivers, lakes, and seas have served as routes for trade and movement of people. Main advantage water transport- lower cost of transportation compared to rail, road and air transport. The simplest, minimally necessary navigation work consists of indicating the boundaries and direction of the navigation route special signs and in clearing the shipping passage from random obstacles - stones, crabs, etc. But if only these works are carried out, the draft of floating vessels will be limited by the natural depths of the river, which even in large lowland rivers during the low-water period can be small. Therefore, the main task of track work is to deepen (and widen) the shipping channel. This is achieved through dredging and straightening works.

In this course project, we are given a section of the river on which it is necessary to lay a navigable passage, develop slots, draw the boundaries of a riverbed quarry and draw up a map of soil alluvium, as well as calculate the volume of underwater excavation work, the productivity of suction dredgers and multi-bucket projectiles.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RIVER SECTION

1. This river channel has a side type of channel process, the flow direction is from left to right.

2. The height of the bedrock bank above the design level is 6.0 meters.

3. The length of the river section in a straight line is 8000 m.

4. Width of the river section between the edges of the main bank:

Vmax=1650m,

Vmin=670m.

5. Width of the water surface at the design level:

bmin=260m.

6. Maximum and average depth of the reaches:

Tg=1.6 m,

Tsr=2.9 m,

Тmax=4.0 m.

7. On the river section there are two rifts and passes, the first rift medium depth 1.5 m on a 1500 m section of the river, and the second depth is from 1 to 1.5 m on a 5000 m section of the river.

8. There is an island on a section of the river. Its dimensions: L =2800m,

ANALYSIS OF BED DEFORMATIONS IN A SITE OF THE RIVER

To perform analysis channel deformations The plans of the difficult area are combined on tracing paper. The plans are combined using reference points of the same name. This plan displays only the edges of the coasts and islands, as well as zero and design isobaths. In this case, the lines of the coasts, islands and isobaths of the previous year are drawn in black ink, and the subsequent year - in red. Based on the combined plans, the zones of alluvium and erosion are determined, their areas are determined, general focus and the reasons for channel reformations. Alluvial zones are shaded in Brown color, and erosion - blue.

1 Erosion zones: located from the beginning of the section 1 km 600 m there is an erosion of 60 m, at 2 km 200 m there is an erosion of 40 m, at 4 km 700 m there is an erosion of 130 m, at 5 km there is an erosion of 30 m, at 4 km there is an erosion of 100 m.

2 Alluvial zones: sediment is located at 1 km 900 m sediment 200 m, at 3 km 200 m sediment 150 m, at 3 km 600 m sediment 100 m, at 3 km 800 m sediment 250 m, at 4 km 100 m sediment 60 m.

3 moving no middle

4 deformation, at the top there is an erosion of 30 m, and at the tail there is an erosion of 30 m, and sedimentation of 10 m.

Accumulates in the left branch of the river large quantity sediments, and the one on the right is more eroded. We can conclude that the left sleeve is gradually turning into a secondary one.

The end of the 1880s - the beginning of the 1890s is perhaps the most fruitful period in creative life Levitan. At this time, the artist made several trips to the Volga, where he gained impressions and creative energy to create his greatest works.

One of them - " Summer evening. River" - was written in 1890-1896. This painting is an artistic summary of the great artist’s feelings from communicating with the great river.

In front of us is the calm surface of the river - wide, deep, majestic. The picture is filled with a feeling of the breadth of the river expanse, the cool freshness of the air, a feeling of freedom and flight. The pre-sunset sky is calm, full of peace and bliss. The far bank of the river is very beautifully painted - with green hills covered with picturesque groves.

The mirror of the water reflects both the hills of the far shore and the sky, which is just beginning to darken. The sun is still high above the horizon, and sunlight, gently spreading, colors everything around with a magical shimmer.

The artist achieves in this painting a three-dimensional image and special sensitivity to the slightest movement, the pulsation of nature. There is no hint of anything excessive or flashy here. On the contrary, the richness of colors is gentle halftones and shades varying degrees intensity. This informs the canvas “Summer Evening. River" special expressiveness and emotionality.

Levitan managed to express on canvas the harmony and purity inherent in nature. In the picture one can feel the desire to plunge into peaceful silence and the author’s sadness is felt - sublime and spiritual.

In addition to the description of the painting by I. I. Levitan “Summer Evening. River", our website contains many other descriptions of paintings by various artists, which can be used both in preparation for writing an essay on a painting, and simply for a more complete acquaintance with the work of famous masters of the past.