Tharthar lake
| Tharthar lake | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
| Coordinates | 33 ° 57 '9 " N , 43 ° 15' 51" E | ||||
| Data on the structure | |||||
The Tharthar Lake ( Arabic بحيرة الثرثار Buhairat ath-Tharthar , DMG Buḥairat aṯ-Ṯarṯār ) is the largest lake in Iraq. It is located between the Tigris and the Euphrates about 90 kilometers northwest of Baghdad in the governorates of Salah ad-Din and al-Anbar .
The artificial lake is located in a natural depression at the end of Wadi Tharthar ( Arabic وادي الثرثار, DMG Wādī aṯ-Ṯarṯār ), which rises about 250 km further north in the ridge of the Jabal Sinjar . From the wadi , however, usually only in the spring and then only little water reaches the lake, which was created as a flood retention basin of the Tigris and to transfer water from the Tigris to the Euphrates.
The tributary to Lake Tharthar comes from the Tigris, where it is diverted through the Samarra weir near the town of the same name, completed in 1956, and directed over the 75 km long Tharthar Canal into the southeastern area of the lake. The discharge takes place via a weir at its southern end and the Tharthar Sea Canal (also Al-Tharthar-Euphrates Canal ), completed in 1976 , which flows into the Euphrates at al-Habbaniyya . Some of the water can also be returned to the Tigris through a canal that branches off in the last quarter of the Tharthar Lake Canal .
The area of the lake, between 85 and 100 km long and 32 km wide, is between 2000 and 2500 km²; the storage capacity is given as 72,800 to 75,000 million cubic meters.
There is almost no vegetation on the lake shore, as at least on the south shore a layer of gypsum just below the surface extends right up to the water. Some irrigated fields were created along the canals.
Lake Tharthar is one of three Iraqi lakes that serve the purpose of a catchment basin, the other two lakes are Lake Razzaza near Kerbala and Lake al-Habbaniyya , the smallest of the three lakes.
literature
- Horst Scharfenberg: Project Wadi Tharthar - Engineers tame the Tigris, Thienemann 1958
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ahmed S. Al-Dhamin, Mahmood B. Mahmood, Adel M. Rabee, Laith Z. Fadhel: The Effect of al-Tharthar-Euphrates Canal on the some ecological properties of the Euphrates river. In: Iraqi Journal of Science, 53, Vol. 1, pp. 52–61, Bagdad 2012 (PDF, 1.5 MB)