Kouilou-Niari River

The Kouilou at Sounda

Template: Infobox River / Obsolete

The Kouilou, whose name is also Kwilu, Kwila, or kwil written, is the largest river in the Republic of Congo. The flow is in its central part in the known region of the Congo Niari Niari. He takes from the right on the creek Louessé and eventually flows into the Atlantic Ocean. It is approximately 700 kilometers long from its source on the Congo River Plateau to the mouth at Pointe- Noire.

The river extends over the entire Congo Basin between the peneplain landscape of sloping low threshold Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean and on four of nine regions of the country ( Lékoumou, Bouenza, Niari and Kouilou ).

The river flows through, among other things Sounda Gorge. At this point, a large dam is to be built, namely the Kouilou reservoir.

The river is not navigable because he has many sandbars at its mouth, which were shaped by the Benguela Current. He also has many waterfalls, of which one of the Zrinski waterfall, which was discovered in 1882 by Dragutin Lerman, a member of the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley and named after the Croatian Nikola and Petar Zrinski.

Hydrometrie

The flow rate of the Kouilou was 13 years ( 1969-82 ) about 135 kilometers upstream measured in Sounda from the mouth ( in m³ / s).