River
Great Ruaha River
480 km from source to mouth · Tanzania.
TanzaniaFlows into Rufiji River4th longest in Tanzania
In numbers
Length
480km
Average flow
140m³/s
Basin
84,000km²
Drop
911m
from 1,025 m to 114 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
480 km of river and 2 stops on the way: 1 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 1,025 m
- 239 kmMtera Reservoir444 km²
- 364 kmRuaha24,000 people
- 480 kmRufiji Riverat 114 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Tanzania
At the mouth it carries 140 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 18 seconds. It drops from 1,025 m to 114 m, 1.9 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 84,000 km², about the size of AT. 2.0 million people live in it. Highest water: from March to April; lowest: from July to October. It is heavily dammed: reservoirs can hold 95% of a year's flow.
Where to start
- RuahaLargest city on its banks · 24,000 people
- Dodoma Airport (DOD)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 214 km from the cityCar hire at DAR airport (Dar es Salaam)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From June to OctoberThe best months to visit
Great Ruaha River, month by month
Highest water: from March to April
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: from June to October.
From about 45 m³/s in the lowest month to 300 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
Great Ruaha River: the basin in numbers
85,666 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 2.0millionpeople live in the basin
- 24/km²people per km²
- 1,223maverage altitude of the basin
- 779mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 21.3°Caverage air temperature
- 55%protected areas
- 0.5%covered by lakes
- 3.4km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 19% Forest
- 4% Cropland
- 42% Pasture
- 1% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Great Ruaha River: what you find on the way
- 1Weirs
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.4 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Great Ruaha River 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.
1lake on its wayLakeyas
Lakes and reservoirs (1)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Mtera Reservoirkm 304444km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
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.
Photos
Great Ruaha River in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Rufiji RiverTanzania600 km790 m³/sWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1861088) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth 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 | Lakeyas — 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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