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.

Black Sea Regional overview

Today we zoom out just a little to get a perspective on the entire Black Sea region.

The Black Sea lies near the center of this image with the Caspian Sea to the East (right) and the Mediterranean Sea to the South, below.

A little sliver of the blue of the Persian Gulf is visible in the very bottom right corner. And even a little Red Sea at bottom.

The Baltic Sea is visible near the upper left corner.

From this altitude the Sea of Azov looks like a lake to the North of the Black Sea. But the Sea of Azov is connected to the Black Sea by the Kerch Strait.

This image also gives you a perspective of the Crimean Penninsula that sticks down into the Black Sea from the North.

The Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean and therefore the Atlantic Ocean by the Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelle Strait. More about these fascinating features later.....

Several major capital cities are visible. Moscow, the capital of Russia, to the north. And Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine between the Black Sea and Moscow. Ankara, the capital of Turkey, in the center of Turkey between the Med and the Black. Tehran, the capital of Iran is visible just south of the Caspian. 

For orientation purposes, due to the current international focus on the war in Iraq, Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, is near the center of the land area between the "5 blue jewels" of Black, Caspian, Persian Gulf, Red and Med. You can even pick out Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the west shore of the Caspian.

Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is just east and south of the Black Sea and Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, is about due east from the Black.

Notice the greenish tinge to the lands to the North of the Black Sea. And to the south you can see the brownish deserts of Iraq, Syria, Jordan and so forth.

We are just getting oriented to the Black Sea region in order to expand our exploration soon into the cultures and economics and opportunities of the Black Sea's dynamics.