Río Guainía
| Río Guainía | ||
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| Data | ||
| location | Colombia , Venezuela | |
| River system | Amazon | |
| Drain over | Rio Negro → Amazon → Atlantic | |
| source | in the western foothills of the Guiana Mountains 1 ° 59 ′ 43 ″ N , 70 ° 1 ′ 15 ″ W |
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| confluence | with Río Casiquiare to the Rio Negro Coordinates: 2 ° 0 '5 " N , 67 ° 6' 59" W 2 ° 0 '5 " N , 67 ° 6' 59" W
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| length | 617 km | |
| Catchment area | 27,035 km² | |
| Discharge at the mouth of the A Eo : 27,035 km² |
MQ Mq |
2250 m³ / s 83.2 l / (s km²) |
| Left tributaries | Río Conorochite | |
| Right tributaries | Río Aquio | |
| Communities | Puerto Colombia, Maroa, San Carlos de Rio Negro | |
The Río Guainía is a river in Colombia and Venezuela . It is considered to be the upper reaches of the Rio Negro .
course
It rises in the mountains of Guiana in southeast Colombia and then meanders in an east-southeast direction about 350 km through sparsely populated area. From Venado (Colombia) it becomes the Colombian-Venezuelan border river . For the next 100 km it flows through dense rainforest in a south-easterly direction past Puerto Colombia, to make a sharp bend to the south at San Miguel (Venezuela). For the next 150 km, the river remains the natural border between Colombia and Venezuela. On the left it passes the Venezuelan towns of Cuarinuma, Brujas, Santa Rosa de Amanagona Maroa and Tonina and on the right the Colombian communities Isleta and San Rafael Catanacuname. After about 620 kilometers of river, the Río Guainía joins the Río Casiquiare between San Carlos de Rio Negro and San Felipe to form the Rio Negro .
Tributaries
The largest tributaries are the Río Conorochite from Venezuela on the left and the Río Aquio from Colombia on the right. The Río Guainía flows through an area with a lot of rainfall and so it absorbs countless smaller watercourses that bring it to the size of a stream within only 600 km of flow length.
Water flow
There are no hydrometric stations on the Río Guainía, but on the Río Casiquiare 23 kilometers above the confluence with the Río Guainía (in Solano) and on the Rio Negro a good 80 kilometers below (in Cucui). There are different values for the mean discharge (MQ) for Solano: 2100 m³ / s and 2387 m³ / s. Including the catchment areas, the point of confluence shows that in one case the Río Guainía would be the larger river and in the other case the Río Casiquiare. Averaged, the Río Guainía would carry around 2250 m³ / s of water and the Río Casiquiare around 2400 m³ / s (for comparison: the Rhine at Emmerich has 2300 m³ / s).
Development of the river system
The catchment area of the Río Guainía is where the extensive alluvial fans of the Andean rivers meet the southeastern foot of the old continental core ( craton ) in northern South America. Since the beginning of the Tertiary, this Guiana shield has been bulging towards today's lowlands of the Amazon and Orinoco . This is accompanied by a gradual "tipping out" of the almost flat river areas to the south, towards the Amazon. The river networks in the Guiana Mountains often reflect abrupt changes of direction and often reflect paths of former drainage directions. This is particularly true of the Río Guainía, whose water network was previously directed to the Río Atabapó and Orinoco, which runs in the upstream (south) extended valley line of the central Orinoco. The now abandoned uppermost Atabapó valley, the Isthmos del Pimichin , is known as the connection between the Amazon and Orinoco regions (earlier boat transport to bypass the more difficult Río Casiquiare , today a parallel gravel road). To the east of it, the tributaries such as the Río Conorichite run at an acute angle against the direction of the Río Guainía and thus make the former drainage direction obvious. At the Río Guainía, the river has already been diverted, whereas at the bifurcation of the neighboring Río Casiquiare it is just about to emerge.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Augusto CV Getirana: Contribuições da Altimetria Espacial à Modelagem Hidrológica de Grandes Bacias na Amazônia , Rio de Janeiro 2009 (diss.), Accessed on July 14, 2014.
- ↑ Balázs M. Fekete, Charles J. Vörösmarty, Wolfgang Grabs: Global, Composite Runoff Fields Based on Observed River Discharge and Simulated Water Balances , GRDC-Report 22, Koblenz 2000 (pdf, accessed on February 4, 2016)
- ↑ INFORMACION HIDROLOGICA - according to MARN ( Memento from November 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )