Description
The Yarlung Tsangpo River is the highest major river in the world. Its longest tributary is the Nyang River. In Tibet the river flows through the South Tibet Valley, which is approximately 1200 kilometres long and 300 kilometres wide. The valley descends from 4500 metres above sea level to 3000 metres. As it descends, the surrounding vegetation changes from cold desert to arid steppe to deciduous scrub vegetation. It ultimately changes into a conifer and rhododendron forest. The tree line is approximately 3,200 metres. Sedimentary sandstone rocks found near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa contain grains of magnetic minerals that record the Earth's alternating magnetic field current.
The basin of the Yarlung River, bounded by the Himalayas in the south and the Gangdisê and Nyainqêntanglha Mountains in the north, has less severe climate than the more northern (and higher-elevation) parts of Tibet, and is home to most of the Autonomous Region's population (Lhasa City, Shigatse, Lhoka, and Nyingchi Prefectures).
The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, formed by a horse-shoe bend in the river where it leaves the Tibetan Plateau and flows around Namcha Barwa, is the deepest, and possibly longest canyon in the world. The river has been a challenge to whitewater kayakers because of the extreme conditions of the river.
The Yarlung Tsangpo River has three major waterfalls. The largest waterfall of the river, the "Hidden Falls", was not publicized in the West until 1998, when its sighting by Westerners was briefly hailed as a "discovery." They were even portrayed as the discovery of the great falls which had been the topic of stories told to early Westerners by Tibetan hunters and Buddhist monks, but which had never been found by Western explorers at the time. Chinese authorities protested, however, saying that Chinese geographers, who had explored the gorge since 1973, had already taken pictures of the falls in 1987 from a helicopter.
Read more about this topic: Yarlung Tsangpo River
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)