River
Little Zab
456 km from source to mouth · Iraq and Iran.
Iraq and IranFlows into Tigris4th longest in Iraq
In numbers
Length
456km
Average flow
220m³/s
Basin
19,400km²
Drop
1,216m
from 1,338 m to 122 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
456 km of river and 5 stops on the way: 2 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmZagros Mountainsat 1,338 m
- 43 kmMīrābād6,000 people
- 97 kmSardasht Dam
- 225 kmLake Dukan120 km²
- 358 kmDibs2.6 km²
- 449 kmAlZwya15,000 people
- 456 kmTigrisat 122 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Iran and Iraq
At the mouth it carries 219 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 11 seconds. It drops from 1,338 m to 122 m, 2.7 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 19,400 km², about the size of SI. 1.5 million people live in it. Highest water: from February to March; lowest: from July to October. It is heavily dammed: reservoirs can hold 155% of a year's flow.
Where to start
- AlZwyaLargest city on its banks · 15,000 people
- Kirkuk International Airport (KIK)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 88 km from the city
- From April to May and from October to NovemberThe best months to visit
Little Zab, month by month
Highest water: from February to March
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: from April to May and from October to November.
From about 11 m³/s in the lowest month to 440 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
Little Zab: the basin in numbers
20,022 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 1.5millionpeople live in the basin
- 77/km²people per km²
- 994maverage altitude of the basin
- 631mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 16.3°Caverage air temperature
- 0.6%covered by lakes
- 6.8km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 1% Forest
- 35% Cropland
- 17% Pasture
- 2% 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
Little Zab: what you find on the way
- 1Waterfalls
- 1River beaches
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.0 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Little Zab 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.
2lakes on its wayLakeyas
38mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Lakes and reservoirs (2)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Lake Dukankm 226120km²
- Dibskm 3602.6km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
Mountains at the source (38)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Kūh-e Sheykhān12 km away
- Kūh-e Kāseh Bardīān14 km away
- Kūh-e Zendeh Bīd12 km away
- Kūh-e Sarjāl-e Āb7.7 km away
- Kūh-e Āqā Sar12 km away
- Kūh-e Khvājeh Ḩājjīān11 km away
- Kūh-e Shargah9.4 km away
- Kūh-e Mālberān11 km away
30 more on PeakyasOpen Peakyas ↗
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
TigrisIraq1,850 km1,000 m³/sIn the same basin
Syria
Turkey
AzerbaijanWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q954645) · 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, 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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