Tarim (river)

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Tarim
تارىم دەرياسى (Tarim Däryasi), 塔里木河, Tarim He, Talimu He
Map of the catchment area

Map of the catchment area

Data
location Xinjiang ( PR China )
River system Tarim
Association of Aksu , Yarkant and Kashgar
40 ° 27 ′ 46 ″  N , 80 ° 52 ′ 10 ″  E
Infiltration Kara Buran Köl and in the Lop Nor desert Coordinates: 41 ° 5 ′ 0 ″  N , 86 ° 40 ′ 0 ″  E 41 ° 5 ′ 0 ″  N , 86 ° 40 ′ 0 ″  E

length 2190 km 
(according to other sources 2030 km)
Catchment area 1,157,800 km² 
Discharge at the gauge when entering the lowlands MQ
 920 m³ / s
Residents in the catchment area 10.5 million
(as of 2013)

The Tarim ( Uighur :تارىم دەرياسىTarim Daryasi; Chinese  塔里木河 , Pinyin Tǎlǐmù Hé ) is an approximately 2190 km long river in the west of the People's Republic of China . It is the longest river in Central Asia .

course

The Tarim arises in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang southeast of the city of Aksu through the confluence of the Aksu (120 km long) as the actual main river with the longer Yarkant (1070 km) and the Kashgar (765 km); if the water is strong, it also takes in the Hotan (650 km) coming from the south .

The Tarim then flows through the northern areas of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin towards the east. It ends in the eastern part of the Tarim Basin. The river has the greatest flow of water after it leaves the mountains, after which it loses its water through evaporation, seepage and drainage into irrigation channels.

The catchment area of the Tarim covers around 1.2 million km² in which 10.5 million people live, almost half of the population of Xinjiang Province. The area he irrigated in 2002 totaled 198,000 km².

Lower reaches until 1949

In its lower reaches, the Tarim divides into two arms as part of a bifurcation , with the main part of the river running towards the southeast. If this arm of the river carried enough water, especially after the snow had melted, it flowed into the Kara Buran Köl marshland with no drainage . If it did not dry up beforehand, the smaller and eastward branch of the river flows into the no-drain Lake Lop Nor .

Changes since 1949

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps has carried out numerous irrigation projects in the Tarim Basin and the Yanji Basin since 1949 . In the area of ​​the Tarim and its tributaries alone, the area of ​​irrigated arable land increased from 351,200 ha (1949) to 776,600 ha (1994); During the same period, irrigation canals with a total length of 1088 km and 206 reservoirs with a total capacity of 3 billion cubic meters of water were built for irrigation measures.

The Yarkant still supplied the Tarim with 1 to 1.5 billion m³ of water annually in the 1950s (corresponds to an average water flow of 32 to 48 m³ / s), but from 1979 it no longer carried any water in the lower reaches; as a result, 59% of the poplar stocks there died by 1993 .

The excess water of Lake Bosten , which previously fed mainly Lake Lop Nor, has been used to irrigate around 100,000 hectares of arable land in the Yanji Basin since 1949; therefore, its outflow, the Konqi , carried little water until 2000 and could no longer supply its lower Kum-darya and the lower Tarim with water. Lake Lop Nor and its tributaries Konqi and Kum-darya have dried up since 1971/1972. Since then, the Tarim has ended near Tikanlik in the Daxihaizi reservoir located there.

The lack of river water led to an ecological catastrophe: the death of the bank vegetation and the native animals at Lake Lop Nor and the lower reaches of the Tarim, the lowering of the groundwater, the increase in sandstorms including the diseases caused by them and the further spread of the Lop Nor and deserts Taklamakan.

The floodplain forests with the Euphrates poplars ( Populus diversifolia ) totaling 528,600 ha with a wood supply of 5.4 million m³ in 1958 had declined to an area of ​​280,500 ha with a wood supply of 2.18 million m³ by 1978. At the lower reaches the decline was almost 70%; In 1994, 80% of the remaining stocks were in the wilting stage. Along with the poplar groves, the Tarim floodplains on the lower reaches of the river were also badly damaged until 1994 on an area of ​​133,000 ha.

For ecological reasons, water from Lake Bosten has been discharged several times since April 2000 through the Konqi into the Tarim and Lake Lop Nor. According to Chinese reports, Lake Lop Nor was rebuilt in 2004 with a size of 200 km². Gradually, the damage caused by the withdrawal of the water from the Tarim is to be reduced through numerous measures.

According to a resolution of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from winter 2000/01, water from the Ili River is to be diverted through a tunnel under the Tianshan Mountains to the Tarim River so that Lake Lop Nor can be re-created by water from the Ili. The project is called Diverting water from north to south .

See also

Web links

Commons : Tarim  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tarim. on thefreedictionary.com
  2. ↑ Article Tarim in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D108999~2a%3DTarim~2b%3DTarim
  3. ^ A b c Y. Wang, Y. Chen, Z. Li: Evolvement characteristics of population and economic gravity centers in Tarim River Basin, Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. In: Chinese geographical science. 23 (6), 2013, p. 765. (PDF)