Okavango River
The Okavango Delta
The Okavango River, also known as the Okavango or Kavango, is an approximately 1700 km long river in Southern Africa.
River
The river rises as Cubango (also called Kubango ) in the center of Angola on the highlands of Bié and flows from there, not the ocean, but in the cesspools, desert-like interior of Botswana.
He runs through the highlands in the south to the border of Namibia. From there on it is called in its middle reaches of the Okavango and forms for about 400 miles up the border between Angola and Namibia. Rundu, the capital of the Kavango Region - East, located on the south bank of the river.
It crosses the long, but very narrow Caprivi Strip of Namibia. Shortly after Andara it forms with its rapids to the Popa Falls. Immediately at Andara he is a part of its water into a channel for a turbine - water power plant, which was built in the 1980s in a project of the working group for development aid for the supply of a hospital. Then he reached the north-western Botswana. There, the river water seeps into the marshes of the (above ground) drainless Okavangobeckens in a 15,000 km ² and swampy inland delta ( Okavango Delta ), located in the northeast of the Kalahari; the size of the delta swells during the rainy season to 20,000 km ². Therein lies the Moremi Wildlife Reserve ( Moremi Wildlife Reserve ). In its middle reaches of the Okavango is inhabited by crocodiles and hippos. The Delta is renowned for its great biodiversity.
The most important tributary is the approximately 1,000 kilometer Cuito.
Amount of water
Due to the arid weather in the winter the water of the Okavango River and its tributaries - Kubango its inland delta usually achieved only after several months delay, namely, only when it is driven by the high water spurts the rainy season waves southward. Therefore, it happens that the Okavango then flows in its middle and lower reaches only as a stream, as meager trickle or - apart from the retarded in its flow troughs Lakes - completely dry falls. When the rainy season sets in, the Okavango developed into a raging torrent, which supplies its marshy delta with plenty of water. On an annual average, it provides about 10 billion cubic meters of water into its outflow loose inland delta.
River length
The length of the Okavango River is usually stated in reference books with 1600 or 1800 km. Both can be considered correct: the difficulty in determining its length is the fact that the flow in the basin and inland delta above- mentioned splitting a hand in several branches of the river, which then end up somewhere in the vast swamps. On the other hand, the lengths of these rivers are heavily dependent on the water supply of the Okavango River, the much more pronounced during the rainy season in summer than in winter with low rainfall. During the rainy season water flows normally be beyond the limits of this swamp, where he fed some salt pans and Lake Ngami.
Catchment area
The catchment area of the Okavango covers about 721,258 km ².
Sign on Okavangounterlauf
View over the water
In the delta