Tributaries, Their Basin Areas, Discharge Rates and Region Drained
Upper Zambezi: 507,200 km², discharges 1044 m³/s at Victoria Falls, comprising:
- Northern Highlands catchment, 222,570 km², 850 m³/s at Lukulu:
- Chifumage River: Angolan central plateau
- Luena River: Angolan central plateau
- Kabompo River: 72,200 km², NW highlands of Zambia
- Lungwebungu River: 47,400 km², Angolan central plateau
- Central Plains catchment, 284,630 km², 196 m³/s (Victoria Falls–Lukulu):
- Luanguingu River: 34,600 km², Angolan central plateau
- Luampa River: 20,500 km², eastern side of Zambezi
- Cuando /Linyanti/Chobe River: 133,200 km², Angolan S plateau & Caprivi
Middle Zambezi cumulatively 1,050,000 km², 2442 m³/s, measured at Cahora Bassa Gorge
- (Middle section by itself: 542,800 km², discharges 1398 m³/s (C. Bassa–Victoria Falls)
- Gwembe Catchment, 156,600 km², 232 m³/s (Kariba Gorge–Vic Falls):
- Gwayi River: 54,610 km², NW Zimbabwe
- Sengwa River: 25,000 km², North-central Zimbabwe
- Sanyati River: 43,500 km², North-central Zimbabwe
- Kariba Gorge to C. Bassa catchment, 386200 km², 1166 m³/s (C. Bassa–Kariba Gorge):
- Kafue River: 154,200 km², 285 m³/s, West-central Zambia & Copperbelt
- Luangwa River: 151,400 km², 547 m³/s, Luangwa Rift Valley & plateau NW of it
- Panhane River: 23,897 km², North-central Zimbabwe plateau
Lower Zambezi cumulatively, 1,378,000 km², 3424 m³/s, measured at Marromeu
- (Lower section by itself: 328,000 km², 982 m³/s (Marromeu–C. Bassa))
- Luia River: 28,000 km², Moravia-Angonia plateau, N of Zambezi
- Luenha River/Mazoe River: 54,144 km², 152 m³/s, Manica plateau, NE Zimbabwe
- Shire River, 154,000 km², 539 m³/s, Lake Malawi basin
- Zambezi Delta, 12,000 km²
Total Zambezi river basin: 1,390,000 km², 3424 m³/s discharged into delta
Source: Beilfuss & Dos Santos (2001) The Okavango Basin is not included in the figures because it only occasionally overflows to any extent into the Zambezi.
Due to the rainfall distribution, northern tributaries contribute much more water than southern ones, for example: the Northern Highlands catchment of the upper Zambezi contributes 25%, Kafue 8%, Luangwa and Shire Rivers 16% each, total 65% of Zambezi discharge. The large Cuando basin in the south-west on the other hand contributes only about 2 m³/s because most is lost through evaporation in its swamp systems. The 1940s and 1950s were particularly wet decades in the basin. Since 1975, it has been drier, the average discharge being only 70% of that for the years 1930 to 1958.
Read more about this topic: Zambezi
Famous quotes containing the words discharge, rates, region and/or drained:
“Gratitude among friends is like credit among tradesmen: it keeps business up, and maintains commerce. And we pay not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we might the more easily find lenders on another occasion.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)