Which river is longer - Volga or Yenisei? This question may be of interest to many. Including residents of Russia - the country through whose territory these rivers flow. Let's try to answer it in this article.
Determining the length of a river is a geographical issue
Any watercourse has a source and a mouth. The distance between these two points along the channel is the length of the river. This hydrographic value is determined, as a rule, from large-scale topographic maps.
It should be noted right away that determining the length of a river is a task that geographers find it very difficult to solve. It would seem that here is complicated? But in practice there are many nuances that greatly complicate the process of measuring river lengths. We list these nuances and difficulties:
- sometimes it is difficult to establish where a particular river begins;
- difficulties in measurement may arise in the case when it is impossible to establish exactly which of the sources should be considered the source of the main river;
- the process of calculating the length of a watercourse may be complicated by seasonal factors;
- marking the end of the river (mouth) is also very difficult, especially if it flows into the sea in the form of an extensive estuary;
- the accuracy of the geographic maps used also depends on the measurement accuracy.
Today, geographers have satellite imagery of the Earth’s surface, so one of the above problems has become less. However, other difficulties in measuring the length of watercourses remain relevant and unresolved.
Which river is longer - Volga or Yenisei? Unfortunately, geographers cannot answer this question quite unequivocally.
Volga River - Europe's largest river system
The Volga is the largest European river and the largest on the planet among those that flow into inland water bodies (that is, do not have direct runoff to the Ocean). Its length, according to hydrographs, is 3,530 km. Although some researchers believe that the Volga is one hundred kilometers shorter.
One way or another, the area of the Volga river basin is enormous - 1.36 million square meters. km, which far exceeds the area of any of the modern European countries. On its long journey, the river receives over 150 thousand watercourses of various sizes.
Volga is a typical plain river. The flow rate is low (up to 6 km / h), and the total slope of its channel is negligible and amounts to only 0.07%.
The Volga begins on the Valdai Upland and flows, winding strongly, mainly in a southerly direction. The river flows into the Caspian Sea near Astrakhan, forming a wide delta, in which geographers number up to five hundred branches! At the same time, the mouth of the Volga is at a height of –28 meters compared to sea level.
One of the most remarkable Volga landscapes is presented in the photo below. This is partly flooded by the waters of the Nikolskaya River bell tower in the city of Kalyazin.
Yenisei: features of the river and its length
The Yenisei is a mighty and severe Siberian river. Its shores are very different from each other: the right one is tall and wooded, and the left one is bare and flat. Yenisei is an amazing river. Indeed, in its upper reaches you can ride on a camel’s back along semi-desert landscapes, but in the lower reaches you can observe how polar bears catch fish in ice water.
The length of the Yenisei is a question that still haunts many geographers. Indeed, in the case of this river, the problem of determining its source remains unresolved. If we consider its beginning the confluence point of the Small and Big Yenisei, then the length of the watercourse is 3487 km. If we begin to count the length from the source of the Ider River, then this value will be much more significant - 5238 km.
One way or another, the Yenisei is one of the ten largest river systems on the planet in terms of its catchment area.
Which river is longer: Volga or Yenisei?
Both river systems are among the ten largest on the continent of Eurasia. But which river is longer - Volga or Yenisei? Even if you look at the detailed physical map of the continent, the answer will not be so obvious.
The Volga is 3530 km long, and the Yenisei is 3487 km. Thus, if we consider the confluence of the Big and Small Yenisei to be the beginning of the river, then the Volga will be longer. If we consider the source of Ider in Mongolia to be the beginning of this river, then the Yenisei will receive the "palm".