River
Kikori River
320 km from source to mouth · Papua New Guinea.
Papua New GuineaFlows into Gulf of Papua3rd longest in Papua New Guinea
In numbers
Length
320km
Average flow
1,400m³/s
Basin
23,309km²
Drop
1,703m
from 1,700 m to -3 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
320 km of river and 0 stops on the way: 0 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 1,700 m
- 320 kmGulf of Papuaat -3 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Papua New Guinea
At the mouth it carries 1,398 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 1.8 seconds. It drops from 1,700 m to -3 m, 5.3 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 23,309 km², about the size of DJ. 357,000 people live in it. Highest water: from May to July and October. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- IhuLargest city on its banks · 712 people
- Kerema Airport (KMA)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 42 km from the city
- From January to MayThe best months to visit
Kikori River, month by month
Highest water: from May to July and October
Best months to visit: from January to May.
From about 1,100 m³/s in the lowest month to 1,700 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
Kikori River: the basin in numbers
16,574 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 357,000people live in the basin
- 22/km²people per km²
- 1,077maverage altitude of the basin
- 4,155mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 21.0°Caverage air temperature
- 2%protected areas
- 0.3%covered by lakes
What covers the basin
- 86% Forest
- 3% Cropland
- 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
Kikori River: what you find on the way
- 1Waterfalls
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.9 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Kikori 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.
4mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (4)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Mount Tere11 km away
- Mount Pagaruma2.1 km away
- Mount Kworeba9.5 km away
- Mount Huriba7.4 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.
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1741220) · 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 | 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.