|
|
SCIENCE / GEOGRAPHY
List: Top Ten Longest Rivers in the World
Date: 2005
Source: Wikipedia
Base: All rivers in the world
Notes: Since we published this list we have received an email from Prof. Shaochuang Liu, Ph.D, at the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. He directed us to a recent paper in the International Journal of Digital Earth, March 2009, which he published along with 4 colleagues, called 'Pinpointing the sources and measuring the lengths of the principal rivers of the world'.
The methodology they use is based on Remote Sensing Imagery, which is "capable of covering large areas with quantitative observational parameters such as spectral radiance (Rencz 1998, Sabins 1996, Schowengerdt 1997, Wang 1990)." Images were selected on the basis of converges, resolution, availability and cost from satellite series in operations such as IKONOS, QuickBird, SPOT, ERS, RADARSAT, IRS, CBERS, LANDSAT and others. Prof Liu says that his team expect to report new measuring results of rivers in the near future.
For now, their list of longest rivers runs as follows:
Nile 7,088 (km), Amazon, 6,575, Yangtze (Changjiang) 6,236, Mississippi-Missouri 6,084, Yenisy (Arctic) 5,816, Yellow (Huanghe) 5,778, Ob-Irtysh 5,525, Amur (Heilongjiang) 5,498, Congo (Zaire) 5,118, Mekong 4,909.
|
Rank
|
River
|
Length (Km)
|
Location
|
|
1.
|
Nile
|
6693
|
North Africa
|
|
2.
|
Amazon
|
6436
|
South America
|
|
3.
|
Chang Jiang (Yangtze)
|
6378
|
China
|
|
4.
|
Huang He
|
5463
|
China
|
|
5.
|
Ob-Irtysh
|
5410
|
Russia
|
|
6.
|
Amur
|
4415
|
North East Asia
|
|
7.
|
Lena
|
4399
|
Russia
|
|
8.
|
Congo
|
4373
|
Central Africa
|
|
9.
|
Mackenzie
|
4241
|
Canada
|
|
10.
|
Mekong
|
4183
|
South East Asia
|
|
|