Kuma River (Russia)

BW

The Kuma (Russian Кума ) is a 802 km long tributary of the Caspian Sea in the North Caucasus and the Caucasus foothills (Russia).

Course

The Kuma rises in the mountains Karachay- Circassia in about 2050 m near the Gumbaschi Pass, some 25 km east of the city Karatschajewsk and close to the source of its most important tributary Podkumok. From there, the Kuma flows in a northeasterly direction through a narrow valley until they reached the territory of the Stavropol region, the level and the area of the " Caucasian mineral spas " Kislovodsk and Pyatigorsk wraps around to the north. Continue east to north- north-easterly direction running, they finally reached the eastern part of the Manytsch lowland, and turns to the east, before flowing about 100 km south of the town of Lagan in the north-western part of the Caspian Sea.

On the 100 km long section to the mouth, the river for long stretches the boundary between the Republics of Kalmykia and Dagestan dar. After a common definition, it there forms the border between Europe and Asia, which continues to the west by the Manytsch lowlands.

Use

The Kuma is not navigable. Your water is used on a large scale for irrigation of agricultural land, so that the river during the dry summer months regularly dried up to almost 200 km in length from about Neftekumsk to the mouth. For irrigation purposes the Terek - Kuma Canal, which connects the Kuma with the Terek and the Kuma- Manytsch channel were built to Manytsch.