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Shiyang River

The 883rd longest river in the world

km

The Shiyang River, previously called the Gu River, flows through the eastern Hexi Corridor in China. The catchment area of the Shiyang River covers about 41,600 km2, most of which lies within today's Wuwei prefecture-level city of the Gansu Province. The river originates from the Qilian Mountains, and flows north-east, toward the Gobi Desert. The Wuqiaoling Range, in Tenzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, forms the dividing ridge between the endorheic Shiyang River catchment in the north and the exorheic Yellow River catchment in the south. In the Tang dynasty, the Baiting Lake was one of the terminal lakes of Shiyang River. However, the Baiting Lake has dried up and the modern terminal lake of Shiyang River is the Qingtu Lake. Agricultural oases are distributed in the Shiyang River catchment, with Wuwei being the main city of this region. Reservoirs have been constructed for the purposes of irrigation and flood prevention. There were 24 reservoirs in the Shiyang River Basin as of 2000. The population in the Shiyang River catchment was about 2 268 900 as of 2003. Currently people in this region are facing problems of overdevelopment and desertification. In the lower reaches of Shiyang River is the Minqin Oasis, which is surrounded by the Tengger Desert in the east and the Badain Jaran Desert in the west. Currently efforts are being made to prevent the desertification and disappe

Flows through: People's Republic of China.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.

Other major rivers

  1. Amazon6,992 km
  2. Nile6,650 km
  3. Yangtze River6,300 km
  4. Bian River5,806 km
  5. Yellow River5,464 km
  6. Paraná River4,880 km
  7. River Congo4,700 km
  8. Mekong River4,350 km