River
Xiliao River
829 km from source to mouth · China.
ChinaFlows into Liao River
In numbers
Length
829km
Average flow
100m³/s
Basin
147,000km²
Drop
1,231m
from 1,318 m to 87 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
829 km of river and 5 stops on the way: 3 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 1,318 m
- 149 kmChifeng346,654 people
- 269 kmHongshan Shuiku (reservoar i Kina, Inre Mongoliet)59 km²
- 424 kmXar Moron Rivertributary
- 564 kmTongliao261,110 people
- 706 kmShuangliao93,666 people
- 829 kmLiao Riverat 87 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in the People's Republic of China
At the mouth it carries 103 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 24 seconds. It drops from 1,318 m to 87 m, 1.5 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 147,000 km², about the size of BD. 7.9 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from January to April. It is heavily dammed: reservoirs can hold 93% of a year's flow.
Where to start
- ChifengLargest city on its banks · 346,654 people
- Chifeng Yulong Airport (CIF)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 16 km from the city
- From May to June and SeptemberThe best months to visit
Xiliao River, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from January to April. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from December to February. Best months to visit: from May to June and September.
From about 23 m³/s in the lowest month to 290 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
Xiliao River: the basin in numbers
136,925 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 7.9millionpeople live in the basin
- 57/km²people per km²
- 603maverage altitude of the basin
- 414mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 5.1°Caverage air temperature
- 7%protected areas
- 0.4%covered by lakes
- 3.0km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 11% Forest
- 20% Cropland
- 73% 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
Xiliao River: what you find on the way
- 20Weirs
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.5 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Xiliao 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
- Hongshan Shuiku (reservoar i Kina, Inre Mongoliet)km 25959km²
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
Xiliao River in pictures

Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Liao RiverTributaries (2)
Also: Xar Moron River, Laoha He
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1416521) · 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.