Don River

Today we begin exploring where the water comes from to fill the Black Sea.

There are many rivers that flow into the Black. Some of them are hundreds of miles long and drain vast areas.

The biggest, longest and most important river flowing into the Black Sea is the Danube. We will explore the Danube in an upcoming blog.

First, we will start at the geographical "top" of the Black Sea.

To the North and East of the Crimean Peninsula is the Sea of Azov.

We will come back to explore more about the Sea of Azov, I promise.

At the far North-East corner of the Azov is where the Don River empties and supplies water to the Black Sea.

The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. The Don starts in an area slightly north of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, but farther east. This is south of Moscow.

The Don river flows about 1950 kilometers (1220 miles). The city of Rostov-on-Don is located on the river.

If you double click on the map image below and look carefully, you will see how the course of the Don River comes close to the course of the Volga River just to the east.

Guess what? There is actually a canal that connects the Don to the Volga! There is a large volume of inland waterway shipping that moves on both rivers.

You can also see how the Black Sea is connected to the Caspian by way of the Don, the Don-Volga Canal and the Volga. Amazing!

This means that cargo loaded in northern Iran can be shipped all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Don River is located all within Russia. But the Don has a major tributary called the Donets that flows from the Donetsk region of Ukraine and joins the Don in Russia not too far from the Sea of Azov.

There is a major controversy raging right now regarding the proposed addition of a second canal connecting the Don to the Volga. The canal would increase capacity between the two. But Kazakhstan has proposed a different "Eurasia Canal" route that would be much longer but would pass through a lower topography of the Kuma-Manych Canal area and therefore require fewer expensive "locks" to raise and lower ships. Stay tuned for more news on that one!

So, now we are starting to get a mental picture of where all that water comes from to fill the Black Sea.