River
Khovd River
516 km from source to mouth · Mongolia.
MongoliaFlows into Khar-Us Lake5th longest in Mongolia
In numbers
Length
516km
Average flow
85m³/s
Basin
58,000km²
Drop
910m
from 2,070 m to 1,160 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
516 km of river and 3 stops on the way: 1 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 2,070 m
- 2 kmKhurgan Lake63 km²
- 166 kmÖlgii28,400 people
- 459 kmBuyant Rivertributary
- 516 kmKhar-Us Lakeat 1,160 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Mongolia
At the mouth it carries 85 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 29 seconds. It drops from 2,070 m to 1,160 m, 1.8 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 58,000 km², about the size of TG. 110,000 people live in it. Highest water: from July to August; lowest: from December to March. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- ÖlgiiLargest city on its banks · 28,400 people
- Ölgii Mongolei International Airport (ULG)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 4 km from the city
- From June to AugustThe best months to visit
Khovd River, month by month
Highest water: from July to August
Lowest water: from December to March. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from November to March. Best months to visit: from June to August.
From about 23 m³/s in the lowest month to 53 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
Khovd River: the basin in numbers
56,318 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 110,000people live in the basin
- 2/km²people per km²
- 2,316maverage altitude of the basin
- 170mmof rain a year (basin average)
- -3.2°Caverage air temperature
- 20%protected areas
- 1.4%covered by lakes
- 1%glaciers
- 69%permafrost
What covers the basin
- 88% Pasture
- 1% Ice
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
Khovd River: what you find on the way
- 2Weirs
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.2 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Khovd 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
- Khurgan Lakekm 2 · 28 m deep63km²
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
Khovd River in pictures


Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
Tributaries (1)
Also: Buyant River
In the same basin
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q2426540) · 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.