river

Also known as rivers

thumb|upright=1.2|A boat floats on the Mekong in Laos thumb|upright=1.2|South America's Amazon River (dark blue) and the rivers which flow into it (medium blue). The darker green marks the Amazon's [[drainage basin or watershed]]

OverviewAI-generated

A river is a subclass of watercourse and a facet of a drainage system. It has water as a part and is partially coincident with a stream. A river is greater than a brook. It is different from Reka.

Rivers have uses including water sport, fishing, boating, and water transport. They are used by watercraft, aquatic organisms, swimmers, and fishers. Model items include Amazon, Yangtze, River Thames, and Congo.

The topic is maintained by WikiProject Rivers, WikiProject Geography, and WikiProject Geology. It has lists of rivers by length, discharge, and continent. Described by sources such as Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition, it is referenced by 10,382 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 25 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Research

155,000 papers

Backwater makes the tributaries of large river becoming phosphorus "sink".ReviewWater research · 2024Cheng B, Zhang Y, Xia R et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2024.122012
The Urban River Syndrome: Achieving Sustainability Against a Backdrop of Accelerating Change.ReviewInternational journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Richardson M, Soloviev MDOI: 10.3390/ijerph18126406
A river's pulse.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Moutinho SDOI: 10.1126/science.adg4958
Global meta-analysis of river bacterial communities and responses to human activities.Journal of environmental management · 2025Tan Q, Wang X, Xing Y et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.127658
Geographic patterns of microbial traits of river basins in China.The Science of the total environment · 2023Xu N, Hu H, Wang Y et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162070
The biogeographic and genomic signatures of dynamic river networks for terrestrial species in Amazonia.ReviewBiological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Musher LJDOI: 10.1111/brv.70042
River water quality management using an integrated multi-objective optimization-simulation approach based on bankruptcy rules.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2024Babamiri O, Dinpashoh YDOI: 10.1007/s11356-023-31603-4
Integrative approaches to river ecosystem assessment and restoration: a review of methodologies and strategies for coherent implementation.ReviewEnvironmental monitoring and assessment · 2026Zhang XB, Huang S, Hu YP et al.DOI: 10.1007/s10661-025-14957-9

via PubMed

Wikidata facts

Has part: water
Image: White Nile Fishermen (18156464842).jpg
Has use: water transport

Show 16 more facts

OpenStreetMap tag: waterway=river
Commons category: Rivers
topic's main category: Q9701284
equivalent class: id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/Q374
Commons gallery: River
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
category for eponymous categories: Category:Wikipedia categories named after rivers
model item: main stem
described by source: Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
P8168: flag of the Republic of the Congo
exact match: purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_00000022
Digital Atlas of Idaho URL: digitalatlas.cose.isu.edu/hydr/main/images/river.jpg
used by: hydroelectric power station
partially coincident with: stream
greater than: brook
facet of: drainage system

Sources (7)

via Wikidata · CC0

~37 min read

Encyclopedic overview

29 sections

Contents

Topography
Definition
Source and drainage basin
Flow
Non-perennial rivers
Subterranean rivers
Terminus
Classification
Ecology
Models
River Continuum Concept
Flood pulse concept
Fish zonation concept
Movement of organisms
Human uses
Infrastructure
History
Pre-industrial era
Industrial era
Politics
Religion and mythology
Threats
Extraterrestrial rivers
See also
General
Crossings
Transport
References
External links

A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of its course if it runs out of water, or only flow during certain seasons. Rivers are regulated by the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Water first enters rivers through precipitation, whether from rainfall, the runoff of water down a slope, the melting of glaciers or snow, or seepage from aquifers beneath the surface of the Earth.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “river” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.