Chrami
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Chrami upper course: Kzia |
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| Data | ||
| location | Georgia , Azerbaijan | |
| River system | Kura | |
| Drain over | Kura → Caspian Sea | |
| source |
Trialeti mountain range south of Bakuriani 41 ° 39 ′ 26 ″ N , 43 ° 28 ′ 6 ″ E |
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| Source height | 2422 m | |
| muzzle |
Kura northwest of Qazax coordinates: 41 ° 18 ′ 55 " N , 45 ° 7 ′ 31" E 41 ° 18 ′ 55 " N , 45 ° 7 ′ 31" E |
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| Mouth height | 253 m | |
| Height difference | 2169 m | |
| Bottom slope | 11 ‰ | |
| length | 201 km | |
| Catchment area | 8340 km² | |
| Discharge at Qırmızı Körperü gauge |
NNQ (1961) MNQ MQ MHQ HHQ (1966) |
3.95 m³ / s 29.3 m³ / s 51.7 m³ / s 90.1 m³ / s 1260 m³ / s |
| Right tributaries | Debed , Maschawera | |
| Reservoirs flowed through | Zalka reservoir | |
| Small towns | Zalka , Trialeti , Bediani | |
| Navigable | not navigable | |
 Chrami near Kirach Muganlo, a little above the Georgian-Azerbaijani border |
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 Chrami with Red Bridge , Georgian-Azerbaijani border |
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The Chrami ( Georgian ხრამი ; Azerbaijani Anaxatır , also Xram; in the upper reaches Kzia , Georgian ქცია ) is a 201 km long right tributary of the Kura (Mtkvari, Kür) in Georgia and Azerbaijan .
course
The river has its origin on the southern flank of the Trialeti mountain range in central Georgia, in the extreme northeast of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region . It rises there at an altitude of 2,422 m , a little east of the highest mountain in the Schawiklde mountain range at 2,850 m and ten kilometers south of the spa town of Bakuriani . The upper reaches of the river is called Kzia . It initially flows in an easterly direction parallel to the Trialetic main ridge through a partly wide, partly ravine-like, sparsely populated valley that bypasses the outflow-free Tabazkuri Lake a few kilometers to the north.
At the village of Awranlo, already in the Niederkartlien region , the Kzia reaches a plateau at 1500 to 1700 m altitude, the Zalka Plateau , where it joins several smaller tributaries a little later and bears the name Chrami . In the small town of Zalka , the river to the Zalka reservoir is dammed , which was built in the 1930s to 1940s.
At the dam in Zalka, the Chrami leaves the plateau in a south-easterly direction through a narrow gorge, where it loses around 800 meters in altitude on 40 kilometers flown through in wide arches. South of the small town of Tetrizqaro , the terrain gradually flattens out, but the Chrami continues to flow through a rocky, deep valley. The low-Kart Metallic level he finally reaches the villages Aruchlo and Kolagiri, about halfway between Bolnisi and Marneuli .
The Chrami continues to flow across the plain in an easterly direction, takes its most important tributaries Maschawera and Debed (Debeda) from the right and crosses the border with Azerbaijan. After a further seven kilometers, the river flows into the Kura with two arms north of the village of İkinci Şıxlı, about 30 kilometers northwest of the Qazax Rayon Administrative Center .
Near the mouth, the Chrami is more than 50 meters wide; the flow velocity is 1.2 m / s.
Hydrology
The catchment area of the river covers 8340 km².
The mean discharge of the Chrami is not far from the mouth, at the Red Bridge gauge (Azerbaijani Qırmızı Körperü, Georgian წითელი ხიდი , Ziteli Chidi) on the Georgian-Azerbaijani border 51.7 m³ / s with an average low water of 29.3 m³ / s and a mean flood of 90.1 m³ / s. The absolute maximum of 1260 m³ / s was fixed in 1966. The fast-flowing Chrami does not freeze over in winter.
Use and infrastructure
The Chrami is not navigable.
The river water is used for irrigation on the Zalka plateau and, to a greater extent, in the densely populated and agriculturally used Lower Cartelian plain . For this purpose, canal systems were created that connect the Chrami and the lower reaches of its two tributaries, Maschawera and Debed, as well as the Algeti , which flows parallel to the north through the city of Marneuli and also flows into the Kura .
The water dammed up by the Zalka dam is used to operate three hydropower plants located several dozen kilometers of river below the dam, known as the ChramGES cascade in the Soviet period . The water is fed to their turbines through tunnel systems and pipelines, making use of the steep river gradient on this section. The topmost of the power plants is the small Daschpaschi power plant. At the urban settlement Trialeti (formerly the Caucasian-German colony of Rosenberg ; most of the German residents were deported in 1941), the Chrami-1 power plant follows with an output of 113 megawatts . It was built between 1944 and 1949 by German prisoners of war and supplied the first electricity in 1947. The Chrami-2 hydropower plant was built further down from 1954 to 1963.
Not far from its origin, the Kzia is crossed by the Bakuriani- Akhalkalaki road. At Zalka, the Tbilisi - Manglissi - Achalkalaki road and the railway line that also leads to Akhalkalaki cross the river. South of Marneuli, the road and the railway line from Tbilisi to the Armenian capital Yerevan cross the Chrami, as does the branch line branching off from the latter via Bolnissi to Kasreti . Immediately on the right bank of the Chrami, not far from its mouth, is the most important Georgian-Azerbaijani road border crossing Red Bridge (Ziteli Chidi / Qırmızı Körperü ) on the direct route between Tbilisi and Baku via Gəncə . Until 1998, the road led over the 17th century Red Bridge, which gave it its name and which also marks the state border over the river, to a new, around 250-meter-long bridge as part of the TRACECA project a few hundred meters above on the Georgian side opened.
