Pripyat (river)

Pripyat Prypiat, Prypiać, Prypeć
Pripyat River
Course of the Pripyat River
Location
Country	Ukraine, Belarus
Physical characteristics
Source
• location	Volyn Oblast, Ukraine
• coordinates	51.3333°N 23.7905°E / 51.3333; 23.7905
Mouth	Dnieper
• location	Kyiv Reservoir
• coordinates	51°09′31″N 30°29′27″E
Length	761 km (473 mi)
Basin size	121,000 km2 (47,000 sq mi)
Discharge
• average	377 m3/s (13,300 cu ft/s)
Basin features
Progression	Dnieper→ Dnieper–Bug estuary→ Black Sea
Tributaries
• left	Pina, Yaselda, Tsna, Lan, Sluch, Ptsich, Brahinka
• right	Turiya, Stokhid, Styr, Horyn, Stsviha, Ubort, Zhelon, Slovechna, Uzh

The Pripyat at Mazyr, Belarus

The Pripyat at Polesia

A map of the Pripyat

The Pripyat or Prypiat is a river in Eastern Europe. The river, which is approximately 761 km (473 mi) long, flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper.

Name etymology

Max Vasmer in his etymological dictionary notes that the historical name of the river mentioned in the earliest East Slavic document, the Primary Chronicle, is Pripet' (Припеть), and cites the opinion of other linguists that the name meant "tributary", comparing with Greek and Latin roots. He also rejects some opinions which were improperly based on the stem -пять -pjat', rather than original -петь.

It might also derive from the local word pripech used for a river with sandy banks.

Overview

The Pripyat passes through the exclusion zone established around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The city of Pripyat, Ukraine (population 45,000) was completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster.

Pripyat has a catchment area of 121,000 km² (47,000 sq mi), 50,900 km² (19,700 sq mi) of which are in Belarus. 495 km (308 mi) of the whole river length lies within Belarus.

As of 2020, it is being dredged to enable the E40 waterway.

Location

The Pripyat begins in the Volhynian Upland, between the villages of Budniki and Rohivi Smoliary in Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. After 204 km downstream, it crosses the border of Belarus, where it travels 500 km through Polesia, Europe's largest wilderness, within which lie the vast sandy wetlands known as the Pinsk marshes, a dense network of swamps, bogs, rivers and rivulets within a forested basin. For the last 50 kilometers the Pripyat flows again in Ukraine and flows several kilometers south of Chernobyl into the Kyiv Reservoir.

Geography

The length of the river is 775 kilometers. The area of the watershed is 114,300 km². The Pripyat valley in the upper reaches is weak, in the lower reaches it is clearer. The floodplain is well-developed all along the flow, allocating two supra-floodplain terraces. The width of the floodplain in the upper course of 2–4 km and more, in some years, is flooded for several months. In the lower reaches, the width of the floodplain reaches 10–15 km. The channel in the upper canalized; below - winding, forms meanders, oxbows, many channels (one of them overlays the Nobel Lake); there are sandy islands. The width of the river in the upper reaches is up to 40 m, on the average - 50–70 m, in the lower reaches 100 - predominantly 250 m, with the entrance to the Kyiv Reservoir - 4–5 km. The bottom is sandy and sandy-silty. The slope of the river is 0.08 m / km.

See also

• Dnieper–Bug Canal

Books

• (in Russian, English and Polish) Ye.N.Meshechko, A.A.Gorbatsky (2005) Belarusian Polesye: Tourist Transeuropean Water Mains, Minsk, Four Quarters,
• (in Belarusian, Russian and English) T.A.Khvagina (2005) POLESYE from the Bug to the Ubort, Minsk Vysheysha shkola, ISBN 985-06-1153-7.

References

• Припять, Great Soviet Encyclopedia
• Pripyat // Dictionary of Contemporary Geographical Names / Rus. geogr. oh Moscow center; By common. Ed. acad. V. M. Kotlyakova. Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences. - Yekaterinburg: U-Factorium, 2006.
• Joint River Management Program. Final Report: River Pripyat Basin (February 2004)

External links

Media related to Pripyat River at Wikimedia Commons

• Pripyat: Radioactive pollution, 2003