02/05/2023
Did you know about THE YELLOW RIVER
1. The Yellow River or Huáng Hé is the second longest in China after the Yangtze River, the third longest river in Asia and the sixth-longest in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 kilometers (3,395 miles).
2. Originating in the Bayankala Mountains in Qinghai province in western China, it flows through 9 provinces of China and empties into the Bohai Sea.
3. The headwaters of the Yellow River originate at an elevation of 4,500 meters.
4. It is called the Yellow River because huge amounts of loess sediment turn the water that color. So much of this mineral-rich soil ends up in the Yellow River that it can fill the riverbed and thus change the river’s course.
5. It is slow and sluggish along most of its course and some regard it as the world’s muddiest major river, discharging three times the sediment of the Mississippi River.
6. The average flow rate of the Yellow River is 1,800 cubic meters (63,566 cubic feet) per second.
7. The Yellow River delta totals 8,000 square kilometers (3,090 square miles).
8. Its basin area is 752,443 square kilometers (290,520 square miles), containing about 200,000 square kilometers (77,000 square miles) of arable land and over 100 million people.
9. The river is commonly divided into three stages: upper reaches, middle reaches, and lower reaches.
10. The upper reaches, about 3,500 kilometers (2,000 miles), includes the upland swamps and pastures of the Tibetan Plateau and gorges in foothill country to the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. Along this length, the elevation of the Yellow River drops 3,496 meters (11,470 ft), with an average grade of 0.10%.
11. The middle reaches, about 1,200 kilometers (700 miles) from Hekou Town to Zhengzhou, occupies plain and hills in China’s Loess Plateau region, where huge amounts of sediment are suspended. The Hukou Waterfall is in the middle reaches. It is the largest waterfall on the Yellow River and the second largest waterfall in China .
