Senegal River

Catchment area of ​​Senegal

Senegal is a 1086 km long stream in West Africa. He is called and when Claudius Ptolemy as Nias already in Pliny the Elder as Bambotus ( " behemoth " translate as Hippo River from the Phoenician- Hebrew ).

Geography

The river is formed by the confluence of Bafing and Bakoyé in the city Bafoulabé in the southwest of Mali. It forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania and ends at Saint -Louis in the Atlantic.

Together with the Bafing of Senegal is 1430 km long.

In the estuary, an important place for wintering European white storks, is the Parc National de Langue de Barbarie. That there encountered fertile alluvial soil is used for growing sugar cane, corn, millet and rice.

The diam - dam connects the same place with the Senegalese village of Keur Massène in Mauritania. It is situated in the fertile flood plain Chemama - halfway between Saint- Louis and the Mauritanian Rosso river port. Prior to construction penetrated seawater for 150 km upstream. After the completion of the dam, this was prevented, and thus made ​​a change of the flow biotope. The pent-up lake is used for drinking reservoir from which also Dakar, the capital of the State of Senegal, is supplied. The lack of floods now with salty sea water lead to a steady improvement of the agricultural land in the Senegal river. For decades, was salinized, leached soil unsuitable for use as farmland.

Hydrometrie

The flow rate of Senegal was 71 years ( 1903-74 ) about 207 kilometers upstream measured in Dagana from the mouth ( in m³ / s).

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