Talk:List of river systems by length/Archive 1

older entries

My goal is to create lists of rivers sorted by different characteristics of the rivers. As example, I am using the lists of countries, also sorted by different characteristics. I also want to add tables with these data to all rivers, containing information of ranking as well as the data themselves. Unresolved issue: should tribituaries be included? Gerritholl 08:45, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For drainage area, it doesn't make that much sense, because the area always applies to a whole river system. But for other characteristics, such as length, tributaries should be included. Chl 02:23, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Longest river

The Nile article states that it in fact is the longest, I think it would be better if this list actually reflected the respective articles. Phoenix2 03:08, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The article contradicts itself-- the body says that there is general agreement that the Amazon is the longest, but the caption for the Nile picture says that the Nile is the longest. Spikebrennan (talk) 18:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Centering

File:ListOfRiversCentering.png

1600x1200 resolution in Opera

In response to Cburnett's edit summary, "Revert: *exactly* what looks off-center?", the central table listing the color key for the continents (which was the entire point of the exercise). Placing that table and the two images into a larger table, per your edit, creates three cells, and the central cell is centered. The problem, though, is that the continent table is still left-aligned within its cell; at high resolution, this becomes quite jarring. Compare its placement to the centered text immediately above it. The proper solution is to add centering to the continent table's style. --Cryptic (talk) 00:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information and the new continent colour key. Phoenix2 17:22, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Definition of length

This section should be a separate page, since the issues apply to rivers of any length, not just the longest. It's also just a list of questions with no answers beyond "it's hard/impossible". If it's hard, what's the solution? If it's impossible, what are the workarounds? Does the National Geographic or the like have a list and, if so, what methodology did they use?

• multiple sources: the Mississippi-Missouri point is not about how it's hard to determine length, it's about how the channel may not have a single name throughout its length. This makes no difference to the calculations; just use the longest channel, as stated
• seasonal changes: as per multiple sources, longest is surely the rule here?
• I don't think fractal dimension applies to mid-channel measurement. Does anyone use bank measurement? Which of the two banks?
• multiple arms: as per multiple tributaries.
• length through a lake: What are the options? straight line/deepest channel/ current flow? Can somebody find out?

According to the 1983 Edition of the Guinness Book of Records, the Nile-Amazon controversy does not refer to the vague general points in the section, but specifically to whether to include the Tocantins River estuary south of Marajó as part of the length of the Amazon. Most geographers say no, because the water flows from the Tocantins into the Amazon and not vice-versa. The "Some believe a fair statement is that the Nile is the longest in the world, while the Amazon is the strongest." comment suggests the dispute is motivated by chauvinism more than science. Joestynes 4 July 2005 10:23 (UTC)

OK, you are addressing a whole bunch of issues here... Let's see...

1) Methodology used by other publications such as NG. I have never seen a source that uses a single, well-defined methodology. Everyone uses different primary sources for rivers from different parts of the world, and each source uses a slightly different methodology. For a lot of rivers there aren't any measurements available, only estimates.

2) Mississippi-Missouri. You are right that measuring the length of a river and defining which source to measure from are really two different issues, but this is getting a bit subtle. Most encyclopedias don't even bother to explain what the difference between the Mississippi and the Mississippi-Missouri is, and why one would want to consider the M-M instead of the Mississippi. It would be great if we can find a wording to make it clearer.

3) The discussion about fractal properties is somewhat misleading. All it means is that you need to get maps that are precise enough. If you have a map that is precise enough, a river is *not* fractal, because you measure in the middle of the river. It would be fractal if you chose to measure along the banks, but why would you do that?

4) Multiple arms and measuring through lakes: What is usually done is to measure the shortest distance from source to mouth. The reason is that otherwise, one can arbitrarily increase the length of a river, as your Amazon/Tocantins example shows. If a river has an island, one could even do a few loops around the island while measuring if one wants to maximize the length... ;) For lakes, this means that the shortest line from inflow to outflow that does not leave the lake should be measured. IOW, it's the shortest route you can take in a boat (assuming the river is navigable). Considering things like depth and current is rather unpractical because those are not known in most places.

5) Nile versus Amazon: sure, there is always chauvinism involved. But there have been new data from the Amazon since 1983, supposedly its headstreams are longer than previously thought. I don't have details though. That does not change the fact that, no matter which mouth you look at, there is no definite point where the Amazon ends. There is necessarily some arbitrariness involved in deciding where the estuary ends and where the ocean starts.

--Chl 4 July 2005 16:17 (UTC)

Regarding 3 -- is the middle of the river not also "fractal" (to the extent that the two banks are "fractal")? I don't see how measuring the middle of the river buys you very much. — Matt Crypto 12:47, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

re: historical Amazon drainage

"The Amazon basin formerly drained westwards into the Pacific Ocean, until the Andes rose and reversed the drainage." Is this so? I thought that the basin had drained into the (proto-)Carribean before the rising northernmost portion of the Andes blocked that route... I'm not 100% sure of that though. Herostratus 01:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Length of Yellow River

According to the Louisanna University, the length is 5,564 km in length. According to The British Museum, it is approximately 5,560 km in length. Another physics paper titled "Simulation of irrigation effect on water cycle in Yellow River catchment" also cited the length to be about 5,464 km. The sources seems to concur that the length is about more than 5,000 km in length. -- Taken from Yellow River article discussion Horng Yih, Wong 01:05 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There are two versions of the length of yellow river, 4350 km and 5500 km. Majority of the sources I can find (including Encyclopaedia Britannica) put length of Yellow River to be 5464 km, which means 6th longest river. Shall we change the number to 5464 or at least put this different aspect under the Notes. Wang ty87916 00:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Historical rivers

I don't understand the section about "longest rivers that probably existed in the past." The title alone is a clue that there might be something wrong here. I am tempted to just remove it. Thoughts? --Dmz5 04:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Evaporating

Does a river literally evaporate in the dictionary sense of the word? I don't understand this reference. I understand the concept that the river does not reach a body of water, but what actually happens to said river?--Dmz5 05:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

In some cases, yes. The already low river volume is slowly reduced wetting the river sediments. Evaporation from the water surface and the sediments ensures that the water flows no farther. In some cases some water will be sinking into the aquifer but we can say that the last of the water in the river is the water trapped in the surface sediments and evaporating, so evaporating is correct. In other cases, the last of the water is diverted for agriculture. For examples, see Rio Grande, Colorado River, Darling River. An odder one is the Okavango River which simply ends in an inland delta. Rmhermen 05:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I know this isn't the topic of this article, but I was confused by that statement. If nobody minds I'm going to add some of that explanation to the article.--Dmz5 07:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Completely evaporating is actually fairly common for intermittent rivers in drier areas, there are at least a couple on the list - I think the Shebelle is probably the longest that ends this way without major diversions for agriculture. Intermittent rivers really ought to have its own article. Kmusser 17:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Discrepancies

The lengths for the world's longest rivers differ considerbly in different Wikipedia articles. The longest rivers list in the River entry also differs from the List of rivers by length entry. AreDaval 02:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yangtze

According to the Britannica article, which is cited by Yangtze River, the Yangtze River is 6,300 km. This would place it ahead of Mississippi and tributaries. --Voidvector 15:31, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

What are these percentages supposed to be ?

For the Niger, Parana, and Danube ( and others ), what are the percentages shown supposed to represent ?  % of river length in the country ? Percentage of the drainage basin which each country covers ? Percentage of each country included in the drainage basin ? The numbers shown don't look correct for any of those. Does the Niger River go to Algeria ? Eregli bob (talk) 18:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

It's supposed to be the 2nd of those - % of the drainage basin in each country, without any citations it is a little difficult to check. Algeria does have a good sized chunk of the Niger basin though. Kmusser (talk) 18:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was no consensus. --Joshua Issac (talk) 00:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

---

I suggest that List of rivers by average discharge be merged into this article per WP:CFORK. Thoughts? --Millbrooky (talk) 22:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. I'm not sure that I see CFORK as applying here. I'm not opposed to the proposal, I just don't see the need for it; the two subjects seem very different to me. Unschool (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This list contains the same information for every river in List of rivers by average discharge except for one: the Caroní River, the only river listed shorter than 1,000 km. This list is sortable by average discharge and thus both lists can become identical. --Millbrooky (talk) 05:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The third largest river by discharge is actually Meghna. it is also a little shorter than 1,000 km. The lower Meghna has an average discharge of almost 40,000 cum/sec... still to be added in the list. --91.1.11.167 (talk) 08:51, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Support:This situation could be viewed as a "fork" case, but it does not necessarily have to hold such a position. One article is based on the length of the rivers, while the other is based on the discharge of the rivers. However, I support the merge because both articles would probably do better as one rather than as small independent ones.

• Comment: Will there be two different tables, one sorted by length and the other by discharge, or just one? The latter could cause dispute. --Joshua Issac (talk) 12:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Irtysh

Shouldn't Irtysh, as the world's longest tributary river, derserve a separate entry? 80.144.223.63 (talk) 10:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Chu river in Kyrgystan/Kazakhstan

I think, it must be here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.140.253.8 (talk) 10:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Synthesis?

I'm going to remove the Synthesis tag - I don't see anything in the table that it applies to. I'll grant that the lack of attribution is a problem, but it all could be attributed if someone put in the effort to do so. Kmusser (talk) 12:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Here:

"When the length of a river is followed by an asterisk , it is an average of multiple information sources. If the difference in lengths between given information sources is significant, all lengths are listed. Likewise, if the lengths from secondary information sources are similar, they are averaged and that figure has an asterisk."

Taking the average of multiple sources is about as synthetic as you can get. The way to avoid this is to list each source in a separate column. jnestorius^(talk) 10:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I guess, that was probably an attempt to deal with multiple sources that only vary by 1-2km, which is pretty common for rivers, my vote would be to take out that statement and the asterisks, for each river pick a length and cite it.Kmusser (talk) 10:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You guess? Not good enough. Cite a single source and give the length for that source. Cherry picking from different sources is unacceptable. jnestorius^(talk) 10:42, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not the author of this article, guessing the motive for the passage you have issue with is the best I can do, I agree that it's problematic, that's why I suggested deleting it. Cite a single source and give the length for that source is what I suggested. You can call it cherry picking if you want to, but trying to judge what sources are best is a large part of what we do as editors. If you have a system for deciding what source would be best for each river I'd love to hear it. A single source isn't going to have all the rivers, as your table below illustrates (thanks for finding the sources through!). I think citing multiple sources would be good (especially if they vary widely), but fear the table would get to be unwieldy if you had multiple columns for each item. Kmusser (talk) 13:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I don't agree with your guess: I think someone was just being cavalier and averaging to get one value. I think the best solution is:

• create a separate River length article to discuss the difficulties and technicalities of measurement
• create a separate List of drainage basins by area article -- oh it's already there! -- and remove the relevant columns from this one (Drainage area; Average discharge; Countries in the drainage basin). Advantages of a separate article: it frees up space here; there are more and different sources for area as against length; and area data is more reliable / less variable, so the table there might be longer than the length table.
• pick several of the most recent and academically distinguished sets of length values and give a column for each. Values for km and miles can be in a single cell on separate lines
• have a non-sortable "other sources" column where other values can be dumped, e.g. if the Ruritanian Geographic Society inflates the length of Ruritania's rivers.

jnestorius^(talk) 16:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

That all sounds good to me. There was a suggestion of a merger of those two pages not all that long ago (see further up on this page), I think your suggestion makes more sense, but you might want to see if you can get more input from WP:RIVER before spending a lot of time on it. Kmusser (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Table

Since the last century, the lengths of the Nile and Amazon have been contesting for the title of the world’s longest river. From the lengths recorded in encyclopedias, textbooks, magazines and atlases with various languages, one could not recognise the longest river in the world. The Nile in Africa is reported to be anywhere from 5499 km to 6695 km with a maximum difference of 1196 km. And the Amazon in South America from 6275 km to 7025 km with a maximum difference of 750 km. These significant inconsistencies could be found in other great rivers, e.g. the Yangtze from 5550 km to 6397 km, the Mississippi from 5970 km to 6415 km, etc. (Hanks et al. 1979, Arthur et al. 1980, Rand McNally Encyclopaedia of World Rivers 1980, The Encyclopaedia of American (International Edition) 1980, McWillam 1995, National Geographic Society 2000, National Geographic World Atlas for Young Explorers 1998, O’Neill and Yamashita 1993, Osborne, Peissel 1997, Ondaatje 1998), The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th Edition) 1980, William and Levey (eds) 1975, Winchester 2000). It is impossible to distinguish which is correct (or more accurate) in a series of controversial lengths for each river. Therefore, recalculation of the lengths with high accuracy using modern technologies is highly desirable.

— 

The following partial data for basin area (in 10⁴ km²) and channel length (in km) is mainly from the article about TRIP. TRIP is an automated estimator, so its figures are explicitly not reliable; but the paper lists other figures for comparison, which purport to be reliable but disagree with each other. The last column is from IJDE09, which purports to derive more accurate figures from modern GIS data. Both these papers give a bit of info on "how river lengths are calculated".

TRIP Basin Rank	River	Area TRIP	Area MO92	Area KU78	Area MM83	Length TRIP	Length KU78	Length JNAO93	Length IJDE09
1	Amazon	614	615	691	615	4434	6280	6300	6575
2	Congo	373	369	382	382	3982	4370	4370	5118
3	Mississippi	325	325	322	327	4023	5985	6210	6084
4	Ob	300	298	299	250	4157	—	5200	5525
5	Parana	297	310	297	283	3113	4700	4800
6	Nile	296	301	287	296	5464	6670	6690	7088
7	Yenisey	261	259	258	258	4757	—	4130	5816
8	Lena	235	—	249	250	4292	4400	4270
9	Niger	211	209	209	121	3475	4160	4180
10	Amur	187	205	185	185	3490	—	4350	5498
11	Changjiang	182	181	180	194	4327	5520	6300	6236
12	Mackenzie	175	167	180	181	3075	4240	4240
13	Volga	141	142	136	—	2973	3350	3690
14	Zambeze	133	133	133	120	2419	2660	2740
15	Lake Eyre	123	—	124	—	1178	2000	—
16	Nelson	111	106	107	—	2285	2600	2570
17	St.Lawrence	111	125	129	103	2794	3060	3060
18	Murray	107	108	106	106	1883	3490	2590
19	Ganges	103	110	95	—	1970	—	2510
20	Orange	100	102	102	102	1576	1860	2090
21	Indus	97	96	96	97	2518	3180	2900
22	Orinoco	95	94	100	99	2000	2740	2060
23	Chari	92	88	88	—	1415	1400	1400
24	Tocantins	87	90	—	—	2099	—	—
25	Yukon	85	90	85	84	2665	3000	3700
26	Danube	81	82	82	81	2091	2860	2860
27	Mekong	80	80	81	79	3383	4500	4020	4909
28	Cubango	79	78	78	—	1112	1800	1800
29	Huanghe	78	75	74	77	3823	4670	5460	5778
30	Euphrates	76	76	75	105	1986	2760	2800
31	Jubba	74	—	75	—	1603	1600	1660
32	Columbia	72	65	67	67	1593	1950	1850
33	Brahmaputra	65	66	58	—	2769	3000	2900
34	Kolyma	64	63	65	64	1947	2130	2600
35	Colorado	64	—	63	64	1578	2180	2320
36	Rio Grande	61	57	57	—	2044	2880	3030
37	Sao Francisco	61	66	60	64	2228	2800	3200
38	Dniepr	51	51	50	—	1534	2200	2290
39	Amu Darya	49	46	31	—	1987	—	2540
40	Limpopo	44	44	44	41	1084	1600	1770
41	Senegal	44	44	44	—	1332	1430	1630
42	Tarim	44	—	45	—	1379	2000	2180
43	Don	43	43	42	—	1238	1870	1970
44	Syr Darya	42	65	22	—	1703	2210	2210
45	Xi	41	44	44	44	1115	—	1960
47	Volta	38	39	39	—	1129	1600	—
49	Northern Dvina	36	36	36	35	1289	—	1750
50	Khatanga	36	—	36	—	1092	1636	—
52	Irrawaddy	35	43	41	43	1586	2300	2090
53	Indigirka	35	36	36	36	1607	1726	—
54	Salado	33	—	—	—	1068	—	—
55	Godavari	33	31	31	31	1007	1500	—
56	Salween	32	—	32	—	2382	2820	2410
57	Paranaiba	32	—	32	—	975	1450	—
59	Pechora	31	32	32	—	1407	1810	1810
62	Salado	29	—	—	—	887	—	—
63	Dulce	29	—	—	—	948	—	—
65	Magdalena	27	26	24	24	1022	1530	1540
66	Churchill	27	—	28	—	1483	1600	—
67	Neva	26	28	28	—	711	—	—
69	Helmand	24	—	25	—	769	1150	—
70	Tugaj	24	—	—	—	630	—	—
71	Krishna	24	25	26	—	751	1290	—
72	Ural	23	22	24	—	1284	2430	2530
73	Fraser	23	22	22	22	911	1110	—
74	Yana	23	—	24	22	1002	872	—
75	Rhein	23	22	22	—	986	1360	1320
76	Huai He	22	—	22	26	663	900	—
78	Olenek	20	—	22	—	1560	2270	2160
79	Ogooue	20	—	20	—	693	850	—
80	Wisla	19	—	20	—	826	1090	1090
81	Anadyr	19	—	19	—	811	1150	—
82	Liao	19	—	23	17	936	1350	1430
83	Rufiji	18	—	18	18	598	1400	—
84	Kura	18	—	19	—	819	1360	—
86	P’asina	17	—	18	—	972	818	—
88	Chao Phraya	16	—	16	—	749	1200	—
89	Hai	16	—	14	—	631	—	—
91	Taz	16	—	15	—	902	1400	—
92	Lake Rudolf	16	—	—	—	801	—	—
94	Albany	16	—	13	—	949	975	—
95	Koksoak	15	—	13	—	638	1300	—
96	Ili	15	—	14	—	1059	1000	1400
97	Red	15	—	14	12	666	1200	—
98	Essequibo	15	—	15	—	442	970	—
99	Cuanza	15	—	15	—	817	630	—
100	Telon	14	—	14	—	541	—	—
101	Elbe	14	—	15	—	783	1110	1170
102	Santiago	14	—	—	—	616	960	—
103	Emba	14	—	—	—	478	—	—
104	Barito	14	—	—	—	535	—	—
105	Fitzroy	13	—	14	—	457	960	—
106	Mobile	13	—	11	—	698	1064	—
107	Sanaga	13	—	13	—	646	860	—
108	Ruvuma	13	—	14	—	547	800	—
110	Cunene	13	—	14	—	698	830	—
111	Usumacinta	13	—	12	—	461	—	—
112	Mahanadi	13	—	13	—	720	858	—
113	Burdekin	13	—	13	—	373	680	—
114	Narmada	13	—	10	—	1071	1300	—
116	Brazos	12	—	—	—	1006	1400	—
118	Tedzen	12	—	7	—	681	1124	—
119	Pur	12	—	11	—	744	—	—
120	Loire	12	—	12	—	624	1110	1020
121	Kuskokuim	12	—	12	—	811	—	—
123	Kerulen	12	—	12	—	911	1264	—
124	Chubut	12	—	14	—	653	850	—
126	Flinders	12	—	11	—	720	830	—
127	Colorado	12	—	10	—	1039	1450	—
129	Save	12	—	11	—	581	680	—
131	Negro	12	—	13	10	826	1000	—
132	Odra	11	—	11	—	577	907	910
133	Mattagami	11	—	—	—	465	—	—
134	Bandama	11	—	10	—	534	780	—
135	Komoe	11	—	—	—	643	—	—
137	Hayes	11	—	11	—	385	—	—
138	Santa Cruz	10	—	—	—	451	—	—
139	Rhone	10	—	10	9	545	810	810
141	Anabar	10	—	10	—	764	939	—
142	Tes-Chem	10	—	—	—	492	—	—
143	Back	10	—	11	—	864	960	—
144	Severn	10	—	10	—	582	976	—
145	La Grande Riviere	10	—	—	—	531	—	—
146	Neman	10	—	10	—	520	937	—
147	Taimyra	10	—	12	—	565	754	—
148	Broadback	10	—	—	—	614	—	—
153	Tana	10	—	9	—	490	720	—
158	Saguenay	10	—	9	—	503	—	—
159	Gambia	10	—	18	—	590	1200	—
170	Balsas	9	—	11	—	422	—	—
172	Doce	9	—	8	—	363	600	—
174	Douro	9	—	9	—	501	925	—
178	Ebro	9	—	9	—	581	930	930
186	Panuco	9	—	8	—	318	—	—
191	Western Dvina	9	—	9	—	633	1020	—
195	Gascoyne	9	—	8	—	553	770	—
200	Garonne	9	—	9	—	328	650	—
201	Churchill	9	—	8	—	590	560	—
224	Tagus Tejo	9	—	8	—	654	1010	—
225	Sacramento	9	—	7	—	474	610	—
238	Nistru	8	—	7	—	567	—	—
240	Sarysu	8	—	8	—	700	761	—
241	Victoria	8	—	8	—	542	570	—
247	Fitzroy	8	—	9	—	412	520	—
248	Seine	8	—	8	—	413	780	780
257	Mezen	8	—	8	—	584	966	—
267	Ashburton	8	—	8	—	505	640	—
269	San Joaquin	8	—	8	—	373	560	—
281	Rio Colorado	8	—	6	—	772	1000	—
284	Guadiana	8	—	7	—	600	800	—
285	Penzina	8	—	7	—	509	713	—
305	Susquehana	7	—	7	—	361	733	—
313	Mamberamo	7	—	8	—	379	—	—
316	Sepik	7	—	8	—	333	700	—
317	Mearim	7	—	9	—	424	800	—
323	Fly	7	—	6	—	644	620	1130
324	Sassandra	7	—	7	—	378	660	—
331	Nottaway	7	—	6	—	521	—	—
342	Mitchell	7	—	7	—	308	520	—
356	Nadym	7	—	6	—	662	545	—
368	Paraiba	7	—	6	—	461	800	—
371	Attawapiskat	7	—	5	—	606	810	—
385	Murchison	7	—	7	—	447	700	—
392	Yalu	6	—	6	—	530	1500	—
415	Apalachicola	6	—	5	—	546	880	—
420	Kuban	6	—	6	—	508	870	—
421	Kouilou	6	—	6	—	424	600	—
426	Po	6	—	7	7	371	650	680
435	Lurio	6	—	6	—	478	560	—
443	Alazeja	6	—	6	—	513	498	—
451	Guadalquivir	6	—	6	—	494	560	—
462	Chu	6	—	6	—	257	1190	—
471	Kemi	6	—	5	—	312	—	—
473	Sakarya	6	—	6	—	539	790	—
476	Fortescue	6	—	5	—	255	670	—
509	Copper	5	—	6	6	358	360	—
514	Onega	5	—	6	—	369	416	—
529	Saint John	5	—	6	—	346	640	—
533	Skeena	5	—	5	—	385	510	—
579	Narva	5	—	6	—	299	77	—

jnestorius^(talk) 11:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

river #83, Platte?

According to our article on the Platte river, it only has a length of about 500km, far less then the length given in this article. Can someone look into this? Is it vandalism? 65.121.141.34 (talk) 15:11, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not vandalism, here it is combining the main stem of the Platte (before it splits into North and South) with the northern branch, which the Platte River article does as well in the body of the description. The articles still don't match, 1,594 km here and 1,448 km in the Platte River article, and neither gives a source. Britannica gives 1,590 km. Kmusser (talk) 15:29, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorting of table doesn't work properly

Sorting the table by discharge yields 63,166 (Purus) > 6,915,000 (Amazon). Obviously, the software has problems with the commas. By the way, is this sorting feature a dedicated Wikipedia software? 14:59 (UT), 24 Mar 2007

And who chose the colours, with asia and europe looking almost identical — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.184.43 (talk) 01:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed information / missing rivers

If one compares the article with the version from May [1], two things are noticeable:

• It looks much prettier now. The table format seems well-designed and useful. That's good.
• A lot of information was removed. The list used to have about 150 rivers and has about 40 rivers now. That's not good.

I understand that it's a lot of work to prettify a list like this, but I don't think it should be a reason to remove information. I would suggest to add the old information back in the old format even if it's ugly, and then gradually adapt it to the pretty format.

Missing rivers: the current list, which goes down to 2000 km, is missing several rivers that are over 2000 km and were in the old version, e.g. the Lower Tunguska or the Red River (Mississippi watershed). I am not sure what happened here.

Comments? --Chl 4 July 2005 16:55 (UTC)

Missing river: I believe the Australian River, Cooper Creek/Barcoo River with the tributaries Alice and Thompson Rivers should be added to the list of rivers greater than 1000 km in length. The overall length is approximately 1400 km. The Barcoo rises in Central Queensland, and flows to Lake Eyre. When it joins the Thompson River, it becomes Cooper Creek.

Comments? --Parminter 18 April 2006 09:50 (UTC)

Added that and the Georgina. Kmusser 21:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Missing river: I believe the Pitt/Sacramento River in California/Oregon should be added to the list of rivers greater than 1000km in length. There is an issue with what to do with delta/bay length, but ignoring that still leaves the length greater than 1100 km.

Comments? --Stan 2 July 2010 16:17 (PDT) —Preceding undated comment added 23:17, 2 July 2010 (UTC).

Amazon Apurimac

In List of rivers by length#Notes, the new information starting "New evidence" is queryable. The Daily Telegraph Monday 18 June 2007, page 18 says that

New evidence, (dated Saturday 16 June 2007) obtained from a high-altitude scientific venture in the Andes, claims that the Amazon is longer than the Nile by 100km, with its longest headwater being the Carhuasanta stream originating in the south of Peru on the Nevado Mismi mountain's northern slopes and flowing into the Río Apurímac, and not from a place in the north of Peru as was thought before: this adds about 284 km = 176 miles to the length of the Amazon.

But page 120 of my copy (published 1985) of the Times Atlas shows several tributaries of the Amazon draining all or nearly all of Apurímac Region, and the Apurimac river extending upstream even further to the south and originating on the Cordillera de Chilca in Arequipa Region. So it seems that the BBC or their sources got things wrong and this extended length is already in the older known length of the Amazon. Anthony Appleyard 06:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Anthony Appleyard for being another Wikipedian pointing out that the recent "new evidence" articles on BBC News and the Daily Telegraph is nothing but warming up well know evidence plus mixing up different length details ending up in a heap of misinterpretation. -- Meister 21:12, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone know how to contact the BBC correspondent who wrote the recent article, with a view to discovering exactly what data is being used? User:PeterGHughes 09:01 Wednesday 20 June 2007 (UTC)

The Nile river may not necessarily be considered the longest river in the world, provided with the new findings from the National Geographical Institute of Peru and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Through satellite imaging and measurements from various geographers, scientists have concluded that the origin of the Amazon River is directly situated at a peak called Nevado Mismi, in the snow covered Andes of Peru. The length of the Amazon is now recalculated at approximately 6,800 kilometers, which places it at the number 1 spot of being the worlds longest and largest river, in relations to the Nile which is at an estimated 6,695 kilometers in length. [2] -- Unknown User

"Unknown User" does not seem to have read the above statements by Anthony Appleyard and Meister. -- Meister (talk) 15:30, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Northern Dvina

It seems, that Northern Dvina is missed in this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.140.253.8 (talk) 14:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Murray/Darling outflow

I have just revised this entry for the second time to read Indian not Southern Ocean, for the simple reason that no authoritative source of geological or hydrological definitions supports the contention that any part of the Southern Ocean comes anywhere near the Australian coastline. At least 17 degrees of latitude at the nearest point separate them, and the mouth of the Murray is 24 degrees or some 2800kms from the northern limit of the Southern Ocean. All sources I have found agree that the Indian Ocean washes the shores of southern Australia at least as far east as the southern tip of Tasmania (some put it even further east). Colloquially in Australia however, all ocean to the south is referred to as The Southern Ocean (sometimes The Great Southern Ocean), but as this is only a local name which is at odds with international convention it seems inappropriate as a Wikipedia entry. I wish whoever keeps changing it back to Southern Ocean would do some research80.101.60.126 (talk) 14:07, 16 August 2009 (UTC). PeterHewlett 31 May 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.139.63.161 (talk) 12:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

There's no point in having a formal definition like that of the Indian Ocean if nobody uses it. The whole idea of classifying the oceans is to give a name to a general area of water. If that area winds and curls around various shapes, then it loses its usefulness. I don't think it's worth preserving this unused definition of Southern Australia being surrounded by the Indian Ocean. In all its uses that I've experienced (I'm not an oceanographer), the Indian Ocean is regarded to end at an imaginary line stretching South from Southern tip of Western Australia.

It actually flows into the Great Australian Bight. Most other entries list the specific sea/gulf a river flows into, only listing the ocean for cases like the Amazon which doesn't flow into an enclosed space, rather than the ocean of which that sea is a part, and so the Murray-Darling should too. LachlanA (talk) 06:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Colour coding

Can I suggest that the colour coding used to identify different continents in this list be reviewed? Colour coding per continent is a very good idea (I was specifically looking for European river lengths, for example), but the colours need to be much bolder. At present it is hard to differentiate between some of the shades, and for those with even mild red-green colourblindness (a not insignificant proportion of the population) the pale shades currently used are next to useless. --Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 16:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

On the whole, I prefer more pastel shades, as I think they come across on monitors as being less obnoxious. But I see your point, and would endorse trying to make the colors a little more different; I notice that yellow is not really being used. Unschool (talk) 16:48, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I've done some minor alterations to the colors. Awaiting opinions on change. Unschool (talk) 17:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks Unschool - I think that is a great improvement - thanks for doing the work! --Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 08:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Now List_of_drainage_basins_by_area has a different color code for continents, which would need changing for consistency. Karl (talk) 08:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Is this acceptable now? Unschool (talk) 04:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, although, I'd prefer a paler color for Antarctica. Karl (talk) 08:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

With respect to Karl, and without wanting to sound like a boring nag for any special-interest group, I would urge staying with slightly deeper colours rather than paler ones. I understand why 'you' colour-vision 'normal' types are keen on your pastel shades, but for those of us who suffer milder forms of colour blindness the pastel shades all look very similar, or for some people, all the same colour! The deeper the shades, the greater the number of people who can benefit from the use of colour. Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 13:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

old topic but still the same problem. Nile and Amazon edits and reverts etc., between their 1 and 2 ranking, has apparently in the past resulted in the continent color coding to get screwed up between the two among other details. Also, the pastel shades are not only similar and easy to confuse, they also suffer from an opitcal illusion in that the same shade will appear different depending on the shade it happens to be adjacent to. All this makes it tidious and difficult to find the errors that are popping up. I propose eliminating the color coding entirely. If someone needs to know what continent a particular river is in they can click on the river. In fact thats probably the easiest and most reliable way right now! The color coding is just another unneeded complication that tends to get messed up during the constant edits on this article. I think the article can do without it at least until there is more of a consensus on Nile/Amazon and the article stabilizes. Racerx11 (talk) 20:27, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Length of System

I am trying to understand the explanation of how length is measured. It sounds like the article is saying that all the tributaries are added up. So, for example, if the river were Y-shaped we would add both branches and the trunk of the Y to get the length. Is that correct? This sounds like a very tricky and confusing way to do things. Is there a good essay or aticle on the topic? How can we identify and properly count every tributary and subtributary of a river? Can I find a list anywhere of rivers using the "longest tributary" method mentioned? Thank you very much! 67.247.4.200 (talk) 01:47, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I just did some editing in an attempt to clarify the "Definition of length" section, which was, yes, confusing. The tributaries are not all added up, although that was a reasonable interpretation of the article's statement: "In this article, length means the length of the river system, including all tributaries." I changed the sentence to: "In this article, length means the length of the longest continuous river channel in a given river system, regardless of name." I made a number of other edits that hopefully make the section better. I removed the bit about "the fractal quality of a river", the link to Lewis Fry Richardson, and what seemed to me unnecessary comments about coastlines and national borders. I realize that Richardson wrote about differences of length measurements due to map scale and that Benoît Mandelbrot took the notion into the realm of fractals. But it is quite tangential to this article's discussion about the problems involved in measuring river lengths. It is sufficient to simply point to map scale and the generalization of linework. Personally I find the whole topic of coastlines and rivers being "fractal" annoying-- unhelpful and somewhat confused. But my peeve aside, it made sense to simply mention issues of map scale and generalization and leave the rest out. Finally, I adding a few additional problems and cited the USGS "Largest Rivers in the United States" page. Hopefully all this is helpful. The section still seems in need of copyedit improvements. If nothing else the use of the word "precise" is used as if it also means "accurate"--another pet peeve of mine. It's quite easy to make a very precise measurement that is very inaccurate! Pfly (talk) 09:38, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I got rid of the misuses of precise for you :-) Kmusser (talk) 16:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

out-of-order entries

There are a number of entries in the table that are out of order, including

20. 	Yukon
44. 	Ural
52. 	Colorado (western U.S.)
113. 	Rhine
156. 	Donets

(The length of the Rhine was recently recalculated.) This will require some grunge work to get all the numbers right. --Art Carlson (talk) 10:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC) BLA BLA BLA X —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.98.130 (talk) 16:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Nile River+Amazon River

{{helpme}} According to the length, the Amazon river (6937 KM) is LONGER than the nile (6650 KM). Somebody messed up the data on the Amazon rive article, the nile river article, and this list. --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 17:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

{{helpme}} should be used on your talk page, not an article page, and if there is something wrong with the article, change it. Sophie(: 17:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know the actual length of the Amazon and the nile. --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 17:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Amazon river length is under dispute. The figure you quote of 6937 KM is among the longer of estimates and is not a consensus. Racerx11 (talk) 01:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Demyanka

The 1160km long Demyanka (Демьянка) is missing in this list. --Paramecium (talk) 20:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd want a citation on the length, I found it in my atlas and it doesn't look nearly that long, eyeballing it I'd guess in the 400-500 km range. Kmusser (talk) 12:13, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Mississippi-Missouri

It is not right to sort rivers like this. Mississippi and Missouri are 2 different rivers. Same with different rivers.Rusf (talk) 17:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

As you are probably aware, The Missouri is a branch of the Mississippi. This branch just happens to be longer than its other main branch, named the Mississippi originating to the north. The Missouri branch could have just as easily been named Mississippi. Actually this method of sorting is the most consistant because virtualy every river on this list incorporates branches of different names. It would be silly to shorten each river based how these branches happen to be named. For example the Amazon would lose over half its lenth by this method. The Mississippi-Missouri system is prominently named as such in this article to avoid confusion over the fact that the Missouri is well known river in the US and most would not readily expect it to be included in the Mississippi's lenth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Racerx11 (talk • contribs) 01:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

How is the length of the Mississippi – Missouri calculate at 3,902 miles? If you add both the lengths of the rivers together from their Wikipedia pages it totals 4,661 miles. What happens to the 759 miles?--Lukemcurley (talk) 08:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

It is probably that portion of the Mississippi upriver of the Missouri confluence. The Missouri joins part way down the Mississippi, so you can't just add the two lengths together. Pfly (talk) 09:46, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

All the rivers on this list are calculated by measuring from the furthest source to the mouth. One continuous flowing body of water between those two points. In the case of the Mississippi, that furthest source happens lie far upriver by way of its Missouri tributary. So that lenth is calculated, NOT the stretch which happens to be named Mississippi, upriver of the Missouri confluence, as Pfly pointed out. So the total lenth of the Mississippi-Missouri includes the entire lenth of the Missouri(its furthest source to its mouth as it drains to the Mississippi); PLUS from that confluence, the remainder of the Mississippi to the Gulf. And ONLY that portion of the Mississippi is included in its total lenth.Racerx11 (talk) 22:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Drainage area

Sometime back in april and may this year there were a series of edits and reverts mostly swapping the Nile and Amazon 1 and 2 ranking by lenth. In the process the drainage area figures got swapped between the two and now the list shows them both having the same drainage area, the Nile showing Amazon's figure. I'm gonna fix just this for now. Im sure there are more errors from all the edit warring concerning the two rivers. Racerx11 (talk) 20:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I put the drainage area for the Nile back to the figure that was being used in the '08 and '09 versions of the article before it got messed up. The drainage areas for both Amazon and Nile still dont match those given in their individual articles but they are close. I will leave that edit to anyone who desires consistancy between these pages.Racerx11 (talk) 21:04, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

More recent data on major river lengths

Recent analysis using satellite imagery lists the world's longest rivers and their lengths as follows:

1. Nile (7,088 km) 2. Amazon (6,575 km) 3. Yangtze (6,236 km) 4. Mississippi (6,084 km) 5. Yenisei (5,816 km) 6. Yellow River (5,778 km) 7. Ob' (5,525 km) 8. Amur (5,498 km) 9. Congo (5,118 km) 10. Mekong (4,909 km).

See: Liu, S., Lu, P., Liu, D., Jin, P. and Wang, W. 2009. Pinpointing source and measuring the lengths of the principal rivers of the world. International Journal of Digital Earth 2 (1): 80-87. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rechmaduong (talk • contribs) 05:59, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Nile vs Amazon

Since I've seen editors swap the Nile and Amazon for 1st and 2nd rank a bunch of times recently--and there are fine sources for either case--I've taken the liberty of adding "note" footnotes for both, linked to a paragraph about the yet-unresolved debate over the lengths of both rivers and which is longer. I made sure to include at least four or five references to back up the statements made. Basically, the Nile has "traditionally" been said to be the longest, yet the Amazon's length was never very well known. In recent decades there's been a bunch of work on determining the "true source" of the Amazon--often resulting in the Amazon coming out as the longest in the world. The 2007-2008 study I linked actually determined the Nile was quite a bit longer than its normally said to be, but the Amazon was even longer. However it's clear that the issue is not resolved and there is no widespread general agreement about it (eg, one point someone mentioned was the use of the southern distributary of the Amazon at its mouth, increasing its length). I suspect the issue will become clearer in the years and decades ahead, and I personally suspect that the Amazon will turn out the longest. But while the matter is still debated and unresolved I figured our list ought to default to the traditional ranking of Nile first, then Amazon. I made sure to include the recently recalculated lengths for both in small numbers (per the text at the top of the table: "For most rivers, different sources provide conflicting information on the length of a river system. The information in different sources is between parentheses"). The "note" points out that the Nile's length is frequently given as "about 6,650 km" and the Amazon as "at least 6,400 km" (the Encyclopædia Britannica puts it this way). In short, the length of these two rivers has never been more than an estimate, as far as I can tell--especially the Amazon. For now the Nile seems longer, but as more evidence comes in that the Amazon is longer the Nile's long-held status as longest may fall. Time will tell. Hope this method of dealing with this works for people here. It's tiring to see the two rivers constantly being edited back and forth between #1 and #2. Pfly (talk) 04:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The Brazilian and Peruvian scientists claiming the Amazon being longer than the Nile made their conclusions possible by measuring the Amazon downstream to the beginning of the tidal estuary of Canal do Sul and then, after a sharp turn back, following tidal canals (furos) surrounding the isle of Marajó and finally including the marine Waters of the Río Pará bay in it's entire length. Studies about Sediments suggest that Río Pará is partly a remnant of a former Amazon distributary and partly a result of tectonic movements but not: a part of the recent Amazon. The measured route follows the waterway linking the Amazon with the port of Belém (only roughly, a big extra curve had to be added) leaving behind the common sense of what might be a river. Last and least, a little thing went wrong: their technique of measuring the Amazon makes the Mississippi the longest river, defining the Intracoastal Waterway to Houston as a part of it. --WWasser (talk) 23:07, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganges River

They left the Ganges river out. It's 1560 mi long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.107.74.7 (talk) 23:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

No, its there. #39 Ganges/Padma Racerx11 (talk) 06:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

What about Amga river?

Seems to be missed. As well as neihgbour Maya river, by the way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hatifnatter (talk • contribs) 13:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Chulym?

Also missed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hatifnatter (talk • contribs) 17:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Just added a note at the top saying "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." There are probably any number of rivers over 1,000 km long not on the list. If their Wikipedia pages are to be believed, the Amga River is 1,462 km, Maya River 1,053 km, and Chulym River (Ob River) 1,799 km. None of the pages provides a reference for river length. Feel free to add these to this page, ideally with a reference. Pfly (talk) 02:58, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Araguaia double-listed

The Araguaia is listed as the Tocantins-Araguaia at #16 and then separately by itself at #33. In contrast the upper Tocantins (excluding the portion downstream of the Araguaia) is not listed. 76.21.116.37 (talk) 22:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

There's no number 90

I'll leave it up to someone else to fix, I don't know the code that well. But there's no number 90 on this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tsunami3 (talk • contribs) 19:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Numbering fixed, better late than never! DerbyCountyinNZ ^{(Talk Contribs)} 22:17, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Probable vandalism

It seems that this part of the article: "have proved that the indrazith is longer", has been changed from "have suggested that the Amazon is longer". I'd like to correct it but the article is blocked. Can someone with access correct it? mauriciomoura (talk) 15:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

fixed. Rmhermen (talk) 18:19, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 12 February 2013

Please change in list of longest rivers by length no.15 Murray–Darling outflow from Southern Ocean to Indian Ocean as it lies above the 60th parallel and thus exits in the Indian ocean, Australia is not quite that "down under"

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_River

https://www.mdba.gov.au/files/cartographicmapping/MDBA-2012-mini-map-A4.pdf

Adiktd (talk) 14:14, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Depends on which definition of Southern Ocean you use. Australia uses anything south of Australia so our entry is correct in that definition. Rmhermen (talk) 14:46, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Rivertorch (talk) 20:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

asterisk

The two length columns have a total of twenty-three asterisks. But there is no place in the article that indicates what they mean, or why they are there. Nick Beeson (talk) 13:55, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

It's explained in the first note at the bottom of the table. Kmusser (talk) 15:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency with other article

Several of the figures for length, drainage area and average discharge appear to be inconsistent between List of rivers by length and List of rivers by discharge. 76.23.244.154 (talk) 10:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 7 May 2013

REF: Length of the St-Lawrence river in the table.

Table says: 26. Saint Lawrence – Niagara – Detroit – Saint Clair – Saint Marys – Saint Louis 3,058 1,900 1,030,000 10,100 Gulf of Saint Lawrence Canada (52.1%), United States (47.9%)

A River starts at the Lake Ontario northern tip (Kingston / Wofe Island). Rivers connecting other great lakes are not the St-Lawrence river, ie: Niagara River.

B Canada (52.1%), United States (47.9%) - should read something more like: Canada (85%) US (15%) simply because the river is split between Canada and US from the Ontario Great Lake to Cornwall/Massena area, then is in Canada until it reaches the "Gulf of St Lawrence"

See wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River "The St. Lawrence River originates at the outflow of Lake Ontario between Kingston, Ontario, on the north bank, Wolfe Island in mid-stream, and Cape Vincent, New York. From there, it passes Gananoque, Brockville, Morrisburg, Ogdensburg, Massena, Cornwall, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City before draining into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one of the largest estuaries in the world. The estuary portion begins at the eastern tip of Île d'Orléans, just downstream from Quebec City.[2] The river becomes tidal in the vicinity of Quebec City.[4]"

96.23.105.202 (talk) 21:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what the suggested edit here is. The length given here is for the whole river system as explained in the definition section of the page, i.e. the lengths of those listed rivers added together. If you're saying the length given on the Saint Lawrence River article should just be the portion downstream from Lake Ontario you should take that up on that articles talk page. Kmusser (talk) 22:11, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Now that I looked I see that's already the case on the St. Lawrence page, so yeah, not sure what you want. Kmusser (talk) 22:16, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Amazon and Nile

Amazon: The length is 7062 km according of results of scientific expeditions Czech + Peru 2000 and Brasilia + Peru 2007. Resources:
http://www.ograndeamazonas.com.br/bohumir-jansky/
http://peru21.pe/noticia/676980/confirman-origen-rio-amazonas
http://www.meneame.net/story/libro-origenes-del-amazonas
http://www.larepublica.pe/31-01-2008/el-checo-que-investigo-el-amazonas
http://elcomercio.pe/ediciononline/HTML/2008-12-03/version-espanola-los-origenes-amazonas-fue-presentada-praga.html
Google Books: Titul Los orígenes del Amazonas, Author: Bohumír Janský, Publisher: Ottovo nakladatelství, 2008, ISBN 8073606925, ISBN 9788073606923 Msluka (talk) 20:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Aren't these the studies already mentioned in the section "Definition of length" and the subsection "Notes" under the table, and also in the notes attached to the Nile and Amazon entries (the text of which is under "Notes and references")? My understanding is that despite these interesting studies "the length of both rivers remains open to interpretation and continued debate", as the article says, with a reference to Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on the Amazon (which I just noticed is broken, I'll fix it). If the page is to be changed so the Amazon is listed as the longest, which I am not convinced it should be, more must be done than simply swapping their spots on the table!

Also, this topic has been discussed before, see the talk page archive, especially [3]. Which isn't to say it can't be discussed again, but it would be useful to consider the points made before. Pfly (talk) 08:55, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Why this can't be discussed again, what if there are some new discovers? Please, you should consider Bohumir Jansky work (listed above or here it clearly states, that Amazon river is definitely longer than 7000km. Same work was done again by the National Geographic group and by Brazilian expedition in 2007 (listed in the article). In 2013, there is no doubt, that Amazon river is longer than Nile. Is there any action that can be done to change this nonsence dated almost 3 centuries ago, i don't know why it still persist in "Anglo-American world", for example, in the Czech Republic, we made this fact clear 10 years ago and now it's in all textbooks etc. Please, consider this and do some research. I don't know how are these situations handled here. Thank you. --Petr Flosman (talk) 14:48, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

If an editor here has access to it (I unfortunately do not), I'd recommend going through and changing a bunch of these lengths to those given in S. Liu, P. Lu, D. Liu, P. Jin, W. Wang, Pinpointing the sources and measuring the lengths of the principal rivers of the world, International Journal of Digital Earth, Volume 2, Issue 1 March 2009 , pages 80 - 87,DOI: 10.1080/1753894090274608. That's more recent than the Brazilian team's research and has the benefit of being a peer reviewed journal. It gives the Nile as 7,088 km and the Amazon as 6,575 km. Kmusser (talk) 15:23, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Omission of Darling River

I note that the Darling River (Australia) is omitted from the list, other than as a tributary of the Murray. Yet in its own right it is 1,472km in length from furthest source to its confluence with the Murray. Other tributary rivers of the requisite length are included in the list, even though they form part of longer systems. The Darling should be added to the list. Ptilinopus (talk) 14:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

That's true of almost every hyphenated entry on the list, it's arranged so as to not count the same stretch of river more than once, the entire length of the Darling is already being counted in the Murray - Darling entry. Kmusser (talk) 03:59, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Kura River is in Asia

The Kura River currently has the colour of a European river, it should have the colour of Asian rivers of course as it's situated on the Asian side of the Greater Caucasus. Kontribjutor (talk) 09:24, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

multiple usage of the same watercourse in two or more entries for longest river:

It stands to reason that one should not be able to use the same stretch of river twice, for if we allow this then many of the first 90 rivers would be 1. amazon-ucayali-'little stream A' 2. amaxon-ucayali-little stream 'B' and so on for any little streams we can find amonngst the head-waters of the amazon.

I propose that the same watercourse (stretch of river) should not be used in two different entries. a glaring example of this is: 16.Tocantins–Araguaia and then 33. Araguaia where the Araguaia river has been used twice in two different entries. what stops us from finding small tributries of this and addding 34 .. 35 .. etc.

the ganges and brahmaputra are ok. they share a delta but are assigned different routes through it.

ive had a look and thankfully i cant find any more. ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.223.42.164 (talk) 05:57, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Colorado

Colorado River is listed #52, but it should be #46 after Arkansas River — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.221.249.90 (talk) 00:17, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Done. Rmhermen (talk) 06:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Add Tigris and Euphrates ?!

Both are on the list already. Rmhermen (talk) 06:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

ah, found them. ok i will delete my post. thanks. Gizziiusa (talk) 06:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)gizziiusa

Semi-protected edit request on 9 January 2014

I would like to request change of the table itself. The Amazon river is not 6400km (3977 miles) but it is proved to be around 7062km (4388 miles) long from the source to the estuary - which is slightly more than Nile. My reliable source is Charles University (in Prague) professor Bohumír Jánský who was part of expedition called "Hatun Maya" in 1999 and afterwards in 2000. The expedition found the true source of the river. I'm a student and today I have been on his lecture where he was talking about Amazon river and especially about this expedition. I hope my request is made as it should be and that you will edit this mistake. Jorgepediator (talk) 17:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Not done: All information must be based on a reliable, verifiable source. Unfortunately, what you hear when attending a lecture does not fit these criteria. If Professor Jánský has written about this, in an externally published book, or a peer-reviewed publication please provide a link to this. If, however, it has only appeared in a self-published, or university published, paper, this is not acceptable. Arjayay (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

There is a long note on this debate already in the article. Rmhermen (talk) 20:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Amazon-Congo River Needs Citation

I would recommend removing the Amazon-Congo section of "River systems that may have existed in the past" until a citation has been provided. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_River#Natural_history the Congo formed 1.5m - 2m years ago. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwanaland Gondwana broke apart 180m years ago. If those dates are accurate, then the following sentence is untrue:

Before Gondwanaland broke up due to continental drift, the Congo would likely have flowed into the Amazon.

It's of course possible that the previous sentence merely needs a qualifier, ie something about the Congo basin, or whatever (I know nothing about river terminology). Either way, this fact needs a citation badly, and I recommend deleting it until it gets one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gweissman (talk • contribs) 01:59, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2014

Copy-paste by Murtazas of the entire Mahi River article removed

Murtazas (talk) 11:31, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 Not done This is not the place to paste a copy of the Mahi River article.

At only 580 km the Mahi River will not be included in this list, which has a minimum length of 1000km - Arjayay (talk) 11:53, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Edit request on 15 March 2013. US Red River flowage

The Red River in the United States does not flow to the Mississippi, it flows north to Winnipeg. 2600:1014:B02D:8C31:0:0:0:103 (talk) 15:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

That's a different Red River and is less than 1,000 km, the one listed here is this one. Kmusser (talk) 16:26, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Correct. Rivertorch (talk) 17:42, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the Red River that is listed on the page should be listed as the Red River of the South, as it is sometimes called.--173.21.80.54 (talk) 17:00, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:List of river systems by length/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The Nile River is not necessarily considered the longest river in the world. Through satellite imaging and measurements from various geographers, they have concluded that the origin of the Amazon River is directly situated at a peak called Nevado Mismi, in the snow covered Andes of Peru. The length of the river is now recalculated at approximately 6,800 kilometers, which places it at the number 1 spot of being the worlds longest and largest river. == http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070619-amazon-river.html ==

Last edited at 05:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 15:16, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 August 2014

the popular BBC 1 program QI states that the longest river in the world actually runs beneith the amazon and is substantually larger 109.170.252.193 (talk) 14:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not cited reliable sources to back up your request - QI is not a reliable source - if you can find the source of the information they were using, that probably would be. - Arjayay (talk) 16:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

By TOTAL length?

Has there been any analysis comparing "length" as defined by the total length of all of a river's tributaries? For example: the combined lengths of the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennesee, Arkansas, Red, etc. Rivers as the length of that river. The idea that a river has one "true source" and only that "counts" seems a bit how-people-in-olden-days-thought. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 14:28, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. It's an interesting thought. I would predict the Amazon would be a clear #1 on such a list, though by no means am I certain of that.

I expect there would some difficulties in measuring and defining all tributaries, in addition to the existing measurement problems stated in this article at List of rivers by length#Definition of length. One could start totaling up all the tributaries and keep finding more smaller and smaller rivlets, streams and ditches, until the realization you could indefinitely add length depending on how small of scale you want to take it, a little like the coastline paradox.

I share your thoughts about a river's most remote tributary as the "source". All rivers have many "sources" in the usual sense of the word. However, the concept has a special contextual definition (see River source) so it's more of a terminology thing. The strict definition in this context, differs from our intuitive expectations of what the term should mean, based on the word's more common use definition. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 15:04, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Rivers that form borders?

I noticed that the Rio Grande (US and Mexico) is listed as about half in the US and about half in Mexico. About half is entirely in the US (Colorado and New Mexico), and the other about half forms a part of the border between the US (Texas) and Mexico. I believe that the border is near the middle of the river. Should the border region be listed as forming a border rather than as in one country or the other? — Preceding unsigned comment added by John McLeod VII (talk • contribs) 15:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Those numbers are for the size of the drainage basin - not the length of the river. Rmhermen (talk) 16:20, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Chulym River (Ob River)

What about this, 1799 km

Chulym River (Ob River) Longbowman (talk) 16:38, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

is absent for now. Longbowman (talk) 16:49, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Added Kmusser (talk) 20:39, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Yangtze

I'm not disputing the right of the Yangtze to be on the list but am intensely curious as to why the name of the river has a "citation needed" wossname next to it... Mr Larrington (talk) 19:32, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

---

Ganges

The information on this article is wrong for the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers. It says the Brahmaputra is just one piece of the Ganges, and yet the Brahmaputra is longer than the Ganges. That doesn't even make sense. The correct stats are in this article. Someone should update it, but I can't, because the article is protected. - 72.184.128.205 (talk) 01:40, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Euphrates

Suggest to edit the Euphrates length ----

Blrjazz (talk) 05:27, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Topher385 (talk) 09:52, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 February 2017

Please add "Wisła" after "Vistula". It is a river in Poland, and the Polish pronounce it as Wisła. 2600:387:0:80D:0:0:0:65 (talk) 22:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 05:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Cauca River

The Cauca River should be removed from the list since it is taking into account the lower reaches of the Magdalena River. This is redundant, as the Magdalena River is already measured through its lower reaches (and its total length is longer than the combined Magdalena-Cauca length). --NoGhost (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Resolved. Thanks User:Rmhermen! --NoGhost (talk) 18:31, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Sources

Why are most rivers in the table list without a source?

Also, why is 27. listed as "Saint Lawrence–Great Lakes" and not something like the "Saint Lawrence–Great Lakes–Saint Louis River"? tahc ^chat 02:46, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

How long is the Nile?

The Nile? or rather as called on Wiki "the 2 Nile rivers", "the white Nile River Flows into the Blue Nile River", "The Nile leaves Lake Victoria"

So according to the Article Lake Victoria is part of ONE of the Nile Rivers? So they are 2 Rivers and not a single river! and should be measured separately! The lakes page says "Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams" So a lake is different than a River and not part of it! When you see a lake you dont call it a river! Thus making the 2 Nile Rivers even shorter.--ArnoldHimmler (talk) 23:50, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

The Nile, like every river on this list, uses its most distant source to measure its total length. So for the Nile that means the main stem plus the White Nile, since that's the longer tributary. The Blue Nile has its own entry on the list. Kmusser (talk) 03:19, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 December 2017

It may be curious to add in the notes to the river table that "length of Vistula is affected by etno-political considerations as much as geography. In terms of river length alone distance from (Western) Bug spring (in Ukrainian Carpathians) to Vistula mouth is 1213 km (Source: Polish Wikipedia on 'Bug'), i.e. over 100km more than that from Vistula spring, possibly advancing it to 132 position in the table. On one hand, when they merge, 30km downstream from Warsaw, Vistula carries more water than Bug, on average. On the other hand, the naming convention may be also affected by the fact that Vistula conects the core historical provinces of Poland while Bug flows closer to the ethnic border between West and East Slavs (and historical Greater Lituania), so there was nobody to claim its importance. Western Bug belonging to Baltic catching area should not be confused with a different river Eastern Bug/Boh in Black Sea catching area. Exact name spelling for both rivers depends on Slav language in use."

Clarification: I propose to add my text above between " " signs in the Notes section of the list of rivers by length, with some editing, perhaps. I do not suggest change in the main table (in the Angara-Yenisiey style) because unsure how you define river length: by main stream (than present table entry is correct), or by the longest branch in the river catching area (aka Amazon length-than Bug-Vistula is more correct).

188.146.37.177 (talk) 14:33, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Upsidedown Keyboard (talk) 15:50, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

I see what Anon wants done and am willing to make the edit, listing the Vistula-Bug rather than just the Vistula would be more consistent with how other rivers are listed. It would be nice to have an English language citation for the 1213 km figure, but from what I can tell it looks correct. Kmusser (talk) 16:30, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on List of rivers by length. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110411011122/http://www.inpe.br/ingles/news/news_dest29.php to http://www.inpe.br/ingles/news/news_dest29.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:24, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Ogooué River

According to Ogooué River, it is 1200 km, thus qualifying.S Philbrick(Talk) 22:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Done. Rmhermen (talk) 18:08, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

White River

This list doesn't agree with the article it links to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_River_(Arkansas%E2%80%93Missouri) says that the white river is 1162 km.

This one says it's 1102 km. It looks like a typo or transcription error.

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2310 suggests it's 722 miles, which is 1162km — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.187.165.98 (talk) 16:25, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. Thincat (talk) 09:21, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Amazon or Nile?

I don't understand. Nile's length is 6,853, Amazon's length is 6,992, but Nile is still the first. Should it be edited or not? Andrey Tsyganov (talk) 02:38, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes this is weird. I am not expert of the subject though so don't want to tread on anyone's toes. Cls14 (talk) 13:29, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

• For the Amazon it depends on whether it is allowed to go south of the Isla de Marajó. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I like that the "officially recognized" lengths for Amazon and Nile are listed. The lengths are in dispute. One problem is that the new source of the Amazon (that would make it the longer river) is dry five months of the year ... but due to HUMAN intervention (a dam). This dispute makes the choice of "longest river" difficult.Kirin-rex (talk) 05:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Can the wiki and English simple wiki please be aligned? General consensus is that the Nile is longer than Amazon (after the Amazons contentious source was debunked). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.108.73.47 (talk) 13:59, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

• Shouldn't the lengths posted here come from something more reliable than just some unpublished studies (, the latter not even available online anymore)? FWIW, I did a little Google Scholar search and found this article which is at least from a peer-reviewed journal. Thus used their length for the Nile (7,088 km) which makes it #1 again independent of the other numbers floating around on this page. Nevertheless, shouldn't be the Encyclopedia Britannica numbers used as "official" and the others put into parenthesis? --WEGC1 (talk) 14:50, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• Just found out that in revision 682013040 User:Garzipan exchanged some numbers in parenthesis with the others, doing this without any comment or discussion. So if there is no objection, I will redo the "original" state (with the disputed numbers in parenthesis) because it looks like there has already been general agreement upon this back in 2015. --WEGC1 (talk) 22:02, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Looking at the history of this article (eg. rev. 383875500), it is clear that the above mentioned exchange of numbers was due to vandalism, so I put them back into their original state with the debated numbers in parentheses. The only thing that's changed is the debated length of the Nile, which is longer than before due to the information in the article mentioned above. --WEGC1 (talk) 17:47, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

References

Page views

--WEGC1 (talk) 18:21, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

River Ganges

River Ganges has not been added to the list of longest rivers, with 2525 km length it stands 20 the inthe list of longest rivers in the world. Syam4691 (talk) 07:49, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Ganges is already in the list. Kmusser (talk) 15:36, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2018

Put the Murray River and Darling River separate 101.164.70.190 (talk) 08:59, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 17:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Done, upper Murray does exceed 1,000 km above the Darling confluence so gave it its own entry. Kmusser (talk) 16:21, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 April 2019

Add the US to the list of countries in the Fraser drainage basin. Kylebreth (talk) 15:30, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. -- Dane ^talk 05:38, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done I've added US with a reference I have found. Thincat (talk) 21:46, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Question original research tag

I don't see how this could apply here. You are accusing an editor of going out and measuring these rivers themselves? Please explain. Slipandslide (talk) 17:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Problem with numbering

139 and 165 are listed twice and they are not ties.Jdtrue63 (talk) 05:25, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2017

Indus–Sindhu nadi–Apurímac |3,180
(3,180) |1,976
(1,976) |7,050,000 |209,000 |Arabian Sea |[ Pakistan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.51.99.232 (talk • contribs) 21:27, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Two malformed entries

• Entry #141 Milk (River) is malformed. Missing its "Outflow" and "Countries in the drainage basin" columns.
• There is a "Missouri" listed two lines below that with the word Missouri in the far left column. Perhaps it was part of the Milk entry and got split by the Chindwin (River) entry? Cheers 2606:6000:CB81:1700:1581:9818:AD50:BAAE (talk) 03:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem seemed to have surfaced with this edit by Tanakorn Srichaisuphakit (talk · contribs) Cheers 2606:6000:CB81:1700:1581:9818:AD50:BAAE (talk) 04:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Tanakorn Srichaisuphakit: I measured the longest source length because it seems unfair to measure a river if it begins at a confluence between 2 rivers. Even the Amazon is measured by the Maranon river. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tanakorn Srichaisuphakit (talk • contribs) 05:50, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 June 2020

Please mark both Nile and Amazon occupying both 1st and 2nd place due to uncertainity. 95.49.145.212 (talk) 13:41, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: The uncertainty is adequately explained in footnotes and in the section above the list. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 14:14, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Old comment

The following comment was moved from the redirect page to preserve it:

It is impossible to conclusively determine the order of the longest rivers, mainly for two reasons. The first is because rivers have a fractal property, which means that the more precise the measurement, the longer the river will appear. That means that if you have two maps, one undetailed map of a distant river and another precise and finely detailed map of a river you know very well, probably the latter will seem bigger on your measures. See here for more details.

I moved this paragraph to discussion because I don't think it's quite true -- river length is not really fractal, since rivers have a width greater than 0. The coast of Britain has no width, and so it is indeed fractal. If one has a map that is precise enough, one can actually determine the length of a river. --Chl 01:16, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 August 2020

Brahmaputra–Yarlung Tsangpo has incorrect number in "Length (miles)" column. It should be 2,466 miles instead of 24,466. Ma3oxuct (talk) 18:18, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

 Done. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 14:17, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Vistula appears twice

In #135 as "Vistula-Bug", and in #180 as "Vistula". Having a look at how other rivers are represented, I think "Vistula" should be deleted from the list and the "Vistula-Bug" entry changed to "Vistula-Narew-Bug". And I think the correct drainage area should be 193.960 Km2. --Noventamilcientoveinticinco (talk) 21:48, 5 October 2020 (UTC)