The Rivers Of France :: Geography France Rivers Water Essays

The Rivers of FranceThe Rhne system The Rhne is the great river of the southeast. Rising in the Alps, it passes through Lake Geneva ( french Lac Lman) to visualise France, which has 324 miles of its total length of 505 miles. At Lyon it receives its major tributary, the Sane. In easterly France the pedagogy of the main rivers is predominantly north-south through the Alpine furrow. The regime of the Rhne is complex. Near Lyon the Rhne and its important Isre and Drme tributaries, draining from the Alps, take in a marked late spring-early summer circus tent caused by the melt of light speed and ice. While this peak is generally characteristic of the river as a whole, it is considerably modified by the contribution of the Sane, of the Durance, and of around tributaries in the Mediterranean south as a result of the fall-winter rainfall peak. Thus the flop Rhne has a remarkably ample flow in all seasons. The course of the river and the local water tables has been much modified by a series of dams to generate power and to permit navigation to Lyon. The Rhne also supplies cooling water to a series of atomic power stations. West of the Rhne, the Bas Rhne-Languedoc canal, constructed after World struggle II to provide irrigation, has proved to be an essential element in the remarkable urban and industrial development of Languedoc. East of the Rhne the Canal de Provence taps the unpolluted waters of a Rhne tributary, the Durance, supplying Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Toulon, and the coast of Provence with drinking water and providing impetus for urban expansion. At its delta, beginning about 25 miles from the Mediterranean, the Rhne and its channels monument significant amounts of alluvium to form the Camargue region.The Rhine system The Rhine forms the eastern boundary of France for some 118 miles. In this section its course is dominated by the melting of snow and ice from Alpine headstreams, giving it a pronounced late spring-summer peak and often generally low water in autumn. The Ill, which joins the Rhine at Strasbourg, drains gray Alsace. The Rhine valley has been considerably modified by the construction on the French side of the lateral Grand Canal dAlsace, for power generation and navigation. The eastern Paris Basin is drained by two tributaries, the Moselle, (partly canalized), and the Meuse the former reaches the Rhine by way of Luxembourg and Germany, and the latter, as the Maas (Dutch), reaches the Rhine delta at the North Sea by way of Belgium and The Netherlands.