Great Usen
| Great Usen | ||
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| Data | ||
| location | Saratov Oblast ( Russia ), Western Kazakhstan | |
| source |
Obschtschi Syrt near Gorny 51 ° 41 ′ 36 " N , 48 ° 42 ′ 56" E |
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| Source height | approx. 120 m | |
| muzzle | Qamys Samar Lakes Coordinates: 48 ° 54 '2 " N , 49 ° 54' 44" E 48 ° 54 '2 " N , 49 ° 54' 44" E |
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| Mouth height | 8 m below sea level | |
| Height difference | approx. 128 m | |
| Bottom slope | approx. 0.2 ‰ | |
| length | 650 km | |
| Catchment area | 15,600 km² | |
| Drainage at the Nowousensk gauge |
MQ HHQ |
7.3 m³ / s 393 m³ / s |
| Left tributaries | Altata, Chertanla, Muchor | |
| Small towns | Novousensk | |
| Communities | Alexandrow Gai , Schalpaq Valley | |
The Great Usen ( Russian Большой Узень / Bolshoi Usen ; Kazakh Қараөзен / Qaraosen / "Black River" or Үлкенөзен / Ülkenösen / "Great River" ) is a 650 km long river in the south-east of the European part of Russia as well as in the north-west of Kazakhstan .
course
The Great Usen rises around 120 m above sea level in the western part of the Obschtschi Syrt ridge , around 15 kilometers east of the Gorny settlement and 40 kilometers south of the town of Pugachev . At first it flows mainly south to south-west, later in south-east direction through the steppe landscapes east of the Volga . After almost two thirds of its course, the river crosses the border with Kazakhstan. At the edge of the Caspian Depression , where the landscape gradually takes on semi-desert features , the river disappears in the area of the Qamys-Samar Lakes (Kazakh. Қамыс-Самар көлдері ; Russian, Kamys-Samarsky Lakes or Kamys-Samarsky Lakes ). The brackish to very salty lakes used to be considered rich in fish, but today they are mostly dried out or only carry water at times. The reason is, in particular, the use of the water from the main tributaries, the Großer Usen and the Small Usen , which flows roughly parallel further west , for the irrigation of agricultural areas before reaching the basin of the lakes.
In the middle reaches the river is over 50 to in places almost 100 meters wide and over 2 meters deep, in the lower reaches the width is about 25 meters. The flow velocity is 0.1 m / s.
The major tributaries of the Great Usen are Altata, Chertanla and Muchor, all from the left.
Most of the larger towns on the river are on the Russian section: the villages of Novorepnoye and Orlow Gai in Yershov district , the small town (and administrative center of the district) Novousensk and the large village of Alexandrow Gai (also in the district center). The most important town on the Kazakh section is Schalpaqtal (formerly Furmanowo ).
Hydrology
The catchment area of the river covers 15,600 km². The mean annual discharge on the central reaches near Novousensk is 7.3 m³ / s. The water flow fluctuates strongly over the course of the year; during the spring flood during the snowmelt a maximum of 393 m³ / s was measured, whereas the river in the hot and dry summers carries very little water and can dry out in sections. The river freezes over from late November to April.
The water flow has also been greatly altered by human intervention: water from the left Volga tributary, the Großer Irgis, is already being supplied to the upper reaches of the Great Usen through a branch canal of the Saratov Canal . Further down there are multiple connections via canals to the Kleiner Usen, other canals lead to basins in smaller lakes, some of which have no drainage. All of these channels are used for water level regulation and irrigation.
Use and infrastructure
The big Usen is not considered navigable. On its middle course it is navigable for smaller vehicles when the water level is high, but because of its isolated location it is not used as an inland waterway .
The water of the Great Usen is used to a considerable extent for the irrigation of agricultural areas, mainly in Russia, and to a lesser extent on the Kazakh stretch.
On the upper reaches of the Great Usen, east of the city of Yershov, the railway line Saratov - Oral (Uralsk) - Sol-Ilezk and the regional road 1R236 that follows it crosses . The middle course of the river is followed by the railway line that runs from Krasny Kut via Novousensk to Alexandrov Gai. This was opened as a narrow-gauge railway ( gauge 1000 mm) by the Ryazan-Uralsk Railway in 1895 and converted to broad gauge in the 1920s .
On the eastern side, parallel to the lower and middle reaches of the river, runs the “Central Asia Center ” natural gas pipeline , which crosses it north of Nowousensk and leaves in the direction of Saratov.
history
The Great Usen area was fought over during the Russian Civil War and became famous for being one of the areas of operation for the troops of the legendary red commander Vasily Chapayev . The as under Chapayev Commissioner used Dmitri Furmanov later described in his novel Chapayev taking the Staniza Slomichinskaja at the Great Usen. The place was subsequently renamed Furmanowo in Furmanov's honor , but received the Kazakh name Schalpaqtal ( kazach . Жалпақтал ) after Kazakhstan's independence in the 1990s .
Between 1919 and 1921, one of the first “large-scale structures of communism” in Soviet Russia, the continuation of the railway line to Alexandrow Gai in the direction of the oil deposits in the area where the Emba flows into the Caspian Sea was tackled. The railway line called Algemba ( Al exandrow G ai - Emba ) with a parallel pipeline was to follow the Great Usen on its western section for a further 150 kilometers. After the project was abandoned, in which up to 35,000 of the forced laborers were killed , in particular due to illness , it was taken up again several times, for example at the end of the 1920s, during World War II and most recently from the 1970s. In the end, only a railway line was completed in the opposite direction from Maqat (northeast of Atyrau ) to Inderbor (Inderborski) on the Ural River , which was to be crossed there. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union , the construction of the line, which would significantly shorten the distance from central Russia to the Central Asian republics, is no longer on the agenda. The embankment that has already been built up at the site of the planned crossing of the Great Usen is clearly visible ( location ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Article Great and Small Usen in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
- ↑ a b Article Kamysh Samarsky Lakes in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
- ↑ Soviet General Staff Map 1: 200,000. Sheet M-39-XXVI. 1983 edition.
- ↑ Kamysh-Samarskije Lakes in Brockhaus-Efron (around 1900; Russian)
- ↑ Narrow gauge lines of the Ryazan-Uralsk Railway on parovoz.com (Russian)
- ↑ Dmitri Furmanov: Tschapajew . 3. Edition. People and World, Berlin 1985, chap. VI.
- ↑ Algemba in the Russian Wikipedia (with references)