Po
Po is a mapped river in the YearMaps hydrographic index. River courses organise settlement, agriculture and frontier-making more durably than any political boundary, and this reach is indexed against the dams, lakes and cities within its catchment.
- Feature Class
- River
- Coordinates
- 45.07°, 9.82°
About Po
The Po ( POH, Italian: [ˈpɔ]) is the longest river in Italy. It flows eastward across northern Italy, starting from the Cottian Alps. The river's length is 652 km (405 mi), or 682 km (424 mi) if the Maira, a right bank tributary, is included. The headwaters of the Po are formed by a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face of Monviso. The Po then extends along the 45th parallel north before ending at a delta projecting into the Adriatic Sea near Venice.
Draining a basin of 74,000 km2 (29,000 sq mi), the Po is characterized by its large discharge (several rivers over 1,000 km have a discharge inferior or equal to the Po). It is, with the Rhône and Nile, one of the three Mediterranean rivers with the largest water discharge. As a result of its characteristics, the river is subject to heavy flooding. Consequently, over half its length is controlled with embankments.
The river flows through many important Italian cities, including Turin, Piacenza, Cremona and Ferrara. It is connected to Milan through a net of channels called navigli, which Leonardo da Vinci helped design.
Encyclopedic summary adapted from Wikipedia: Po (river) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Po in Depth
Geography
The Po has a drainage area of 74,000 km2 (29,000 sq mi) in all, 70,000 km2 (27,000 sq mi) of those being in Italy, of which 41,000 km2 (16,000 sq mi) is in montane environments and 29,000 km2 (11,000 sq mi) on the plain. The slope of the Po's river valley decreases from 0.35% in the west to 0.14% in the east, a low gradient. Along its path lie 450 standing lakes. Almost all of the rest of the non-Italy basin is in Switzerland, primarily in the canton of Ticino, which is essentially drained by the river Ticino rising in the Gotthard Area, and includes Lake Maggiore and Lake Lugano. A small part of the canton of Grisons drains to the Po, partly via the Ticino. The Simplon Valley in the canton of Valais is drained by the Diveria.
Geologic history
The Mediterranean Basin is a depression in the Earth's crust caused by the African Plate slipping under the Eurasian Plate. Typically, in geologic history, the depression is filled with sea water under various geologic names such as Tethys Sea. In the last period of the Miocene Epoch, the Messinian (7–5 mya), the Messinian salinity crisis, a near drying of the Mediterranean, was caused by the sea level dropping below the sill at the Strait of Gibraltar and the equilibrium between evaporation and replenishment shifting in favor of evaporation. At that time, the Po Valley and the Adriatic depression were a single canyon system thousands of feet deep. On the southwest, the Apennine Mountains bordered a land mass termed Tyrrhenis geologically.
Cultural history
The Po is first identified by name in the Graeco-Roman historians and geographers of the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, long after the valley had been occupied successively by prehistoric and historic peoples: Ligures, Etruscans, Celts, Veneti, Umbri, and Romans. At that late date, the ancient authors were attempting to explain the provenance of the name. Perhaps the earliest of these, Polybius (2nd century BC), uses Pados (in Greek) and says that it was to be identified with the Eridanos of the poets. Moreover, the country people call it Bodencus.
This implies that a "country" population either remained from prehistoric times or adopted the name in use by that substrate.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Po (river) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Po: Key Facts
| Length | 652 km |
|---|---|
| Average discharge | 1,460 m³/s |
| Drainage basin | 74,000 km² |
| Mouth | Adriatic Sea |
| Drainage system | Po basin |
Facts from Wikidata Q643 (CC0).
Major River Dossiers
Hand-written studies of the great river systems of history.
Connected Reaches
Nearby watercourses in the same drainage network.
Water Bodies in the Catchment
Settlements Along the Reach
Hydraulic Infrastructure Nearby
Surrounding Terrain
Po: Quick Answers
- Where is Po?
- Po is located in Italy, at 45.0685° N, 9.8242° E.
- Are there dams on the Po?
- No dam on the Po is recorded in the YearMaps dam index, which covers major structures only.