Amur River
by Joe Dorish on 26/02/09 at 5:31 am
The Amur River is the 9th longest river in the World.
The Amur River is located on the continent of Asia forming the border between Far East Russia and Northeastern China. The Amur is the 9th longest river in the world at 2,744 miles. It begins where the its two main tributaries, the Shika and Argun Rives merge.
Image via Wikipedia
The Shika originates on the eastern slopes of the Khentii Mountains in Mongolia while the Argun originates on the western slopes of the Great Khingan Range in northeast China. The Amur ends at the Strait of Tartary where it empties into the Pacific Ocean at the northern end of the island of Sakhalin.
The Amur River drains incredibly diverse landscapes of desert, steppe, tundra, and taiga and the drain basin is about the size of Alaska. Due to its forming of over 1,000 miles of border between Russia and China the Amur is a very important symbol of Russian-Chinese relations.
Image via Wikipedia
At times the the Amur has been patrolled by war ships from both nations but today the two nations are working together as Archaeologists from both nations have recently teamed up to form digs to study clues to how ancient peoples lived along the Amur River.
The Amur Basin has a diverse economic base that includes manufacturing, metallurgy, iron mining, non-ferrous metals, gold, coal, hydroelectricity, wheat, millet, soybeans, fishing, timber and Chinese-Russian trade. The world’s 4th-largest oilfield, The Daqing oilfield, is located near Daqing City in Heilongjiang, a few hundred kilometers from the river. The river is a major transportation lane but does freeze over for 4-5 months every year.
The Amur is bordered by Amur Oblast, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and Khabarovsk Krai of Russia in the north and Heilongjiang province of China in the south. Cities along the Amur include Huma (China), Blagoveshchensk (Russia), Heihe (China), Jiayin (China), Tongjiang (China), Fuyuan (China), Khabarovsk (Russia),
Komsomolsk-na-Amure (Russia), Nikolayevsk-na-Amure (Russia). In addition to the Shika and Argun Rivers major tributaries include the Zeya, Bureya, Sunggari, Ussuri and Amgun Rivers.
The Amur River basin is home to a wide and diverse wildlife population including flocks of Oriental white stork and redcrowned cranes, the very rare and greatly endangered Amur leopards,
Image by law_keven via Flickr
musk deer, brown bears and over 100 species of fish. Wild ginseng, which has long been treasured for its diverse medicinal uses grows in the Amur basin.
The Chinese population in the northeast has risen sharply over the last decade which has put increasing pressure on the conservation challenges in the Amur River and its basin.
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