River
Bahr Salamat
1,200 km from source to mouth · Chad.
ChadFlows into Chari River1st longest in Chad
In numbers
Length
1,200km
Average flow
130m³/s
Basin
90,000km²
Drop
498m
from 851 m to 353 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
1,200 km of river and 3 stops on the way: 3 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 851 m
- 170 km'Ārdamatā55,637 people
- 172 kmEl Geneina Fort134,264 people
- 174 kmAl-Junaynah162,981 people
- 1,200 kmChari Riverat 353 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Chad
At the mouth it carries 130 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 19 seconds. It drops from 851 m to 353 m, 0.4 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 90,000 km², about the size of RS. 3.0 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from January to April. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- Al-JunaynahLargest city on its banks · 162,981 people
- From November to FebruaryThe best months to visit
Bahr Salamat, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from January to April. Best months to visit: from November to February.
From about 45 m³/s in the lowest month to 240 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Bahr Salamat: the basin in numbers
144,860 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 3.0millionpeople live in the basin
- 21/km²people per km²
- 708maverage altitude of the basin
- 602mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 26.1°Caverage air temperature
- 14%protected areas
- 0.1%covered by lakes
What covers the basin
- 11% Cropland
- 67% Pasture
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Bahr Salamat in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
2mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (2)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Hagar Umm Khurug12 km away
- Qereiwid Weiki10 km away
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit
Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Chari River
Cameroon1,400 km1,200 m³/sWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1301912) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.
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Every river from source to sea: the journey, the flow and the basin in numbers.You are here
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