Qutang Gorge

Irtysh a river in Siberia, the chief tributary of the . Its name means White River. It is actually longer than the Ob to their confluence. Irtysh's main affluent is Tobol River. The Ob-Irtysh form a major basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia and the Altay Mountains.

Geography

From its source as ''Kara-Irtysh'' in the Mongolian Altay mountains in Xinjiang, China, Irtysh flows NW through Lake Zaysan, Kazakhstan until it meets the near Khanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia, Russia after 4,248 km .

Economic use

Passenger, freight boats and tankers navigate most of the river between April and October, when it is not frozen. Omsk is home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, and the largest river port in Western Siberia. Major hydroelectric plants at and Bakhtarminsk use the Irtysh near the Kazakhstan-Chinese border.

Some of the Northern river reversal proposals, widely discussed in the 1960-70s, would see the direction of the Irtysh flow reversed, the river being used to supply water to central Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. While these gigantic water management schemes were not implemented, a smaller Irtysh-Karaganda irrigation canal was built between 1962 and 1974 to supply water to the dry Kazakstani Steppes, and to one of the country's main industrial centers, Karaganda. In 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

In the 2000s, projects for diverting a significant amounts of Irtysh water within China, such as the proposed Black Irtysh - Karamai Canal, have been decried by Kazakh and Russian environmentalists.

History

The river banks were occupied by , Kalmyks, and Mongols until the Russians arrived in the late 16th century. The Russian conquest of the Irtysh basin was completed by the early 19th century.

Cities along the river

The main cities on the Irtysh, from source to mouth, are:
* in Kazakhstan: , , Pavlodar.
* in Russia: Omsk, , Tobolsk, Khanty-Mansiysk.