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Ob (Обь)
River
Near Barnaul
Country	Russia
Regions	Altai Krai, Novosibirsk Oblast, Tomsk Oblast, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yamalia
Tributaries
- left	Katun River, Anuy River, Charysh River, Aley River, Parabel River, Vasyugan River, Irtysh River, Northern Sosva River
- right	Biya River, Berd River, Inya River, Tom River, Chulym River, Ket River, Tym River, Vakh River, Pim River, Kazim River
Cities	Biysk, Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Nizhnevartosk, Surgut
Primary source	Katun River
- location	Belukha Mountain, Altai Republic
- elevation	2,300 m (7,546 ft)
- coordinates	49°44′40″N 86°39′41″E / 49.74444°N 86.66139°E / 49.74444; 86.66139
Secondary source	Biya River
- location	Lake Teletskoye, Altai Republic
- elevation	434 m (1,424 ft)
- coordinates	51°47′11″N 87°14′49″E / 51.78639°N 87.24694°E / 51.78639; 87.24694
Source confluence	Near Biysk
- elevation	195 m (640 ft)
- coordinates	52°25′54″N 85°01′26″E / 52.43167°N 85.02389°E / 52.43167; 85.02389
Mouth	Gulf of Ob
- location	Ob Delta, Yamalia
- elevation	0 m (0 ft)
- coordinates	66°32′02″N 71°23′41″E / 66.53389°N 71.39472°E / 66.53389; 71.39472
Length	2,962 km (1,841 mi)
Basin	2,972,497 km2 (1,147,688 sq mi)
Discharge	for Salekhard
- average	12,475 m3/s (440,550 cu ft/s) [1]
- max	40,200 m3/s (1,419,650 cu ft/s)
- min	2,360 m3/s (83,343 cu ft/s)
Map of the Ob River watershed

The Ob River (Russian: Обь), also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean (the other two being the Yenisei River and the Lena River). The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.

Names[link]

The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the As, Yag, Kolta and Yema; to the Nenets people as the Kolta or Kuay; and to the Siberian Tatars as the Umar or Omass.

Geography[link]

The Ob forms 16 miles (26 km) southwest of Biysk in Altai Krai at the confluence of the Biya and Katun rivers. Both these streams have their origin in the Altay Mountains, the Biya issuing from Lake Teletskoye, the Katun, 700 kilometres (430 mi) long, bursting out of a glacier on Mount Byelukha.

The river splits into more than one arm, especially after joining the large Irtysh tributary at about 69° E. (Originating in China, the Irtysh is actually longer than the Ob from source to the point of their confluence.) From the source of the Irtysh to the mouth of the Ob, the river flow is the longest in Russia at 5,410 kilometres (3,360 mi). Other noteworthy tributaries are: from the east, the Tom, Chulym, Ket, Tym and Vakh rivers; and, from the west and south, the Vasyugan, Irtysh (with the Ishim and Tobol rivers), and Sosva rivers.

The Ob zigzags west and north until it reaches 55° N, where it curves round to the northwest, and again north, wheeling finally eastwards into the Gulf of Ob, a 600-mile (970 km)-long bay of the Kara Sea, separating the Yamal Peninsula from the Gydan Peninsula.

The combined Ob-Irtysh system, the third-longest river system of Asia (after China's Yangtze and Yellow rivers), is 5,410 kilometres (3,360 mi) long, and the area of its basin 2,990,000 square kilometres (1,150,000 sq mi). The river basin of the Ob consists mostly of steppe, taiga, swamps, tundra, and semi-desert topography. The floodplains of the Ob are characterized by many tributaries and lakes. The Ob is ice-bound at southern Barnaul from early in November to near the end of April, and at northern Salekhard, 100 miles (160 km) above its mouth, from the end of October to the beginning of June. The Ob River crosses several climatic zones. The upper Ob valley, in the south, grows grapes, melons and watermelons, whereas the lower reaches of the Ob are Arctic tundra. The most comfortable climate for the rest on the Ob - are Biysk, Barnaul, and Novosibirsk.

Human use[link]

The Ob River in Barnaul

A section of the Ob River

The Ob is used mostly for irrigation, drinking water, hydroelectric energy, and fishing; the river has more than 50 species of fish.

The navigable waters within the Ob basin reach a total length of 9,300 miles (15,000 km). The importance of the Ob basin navigation for transportation was particularly great before the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, since, despite the general south-to-north direction of the flow of Ob and most of its tributaries, the width of the Ob basin provided for (somewhat indirect) transportation in the east-west direction as well. Until the early 20th century, a particularly important western river port was Tyumen, located on the Tura River, a tributary of the Tobol. Reached by an extension of the Ekaterinburg-Perm railway in 1885, and thus obtaining a rail link to the Kama and Volga rivers in the heart of Russia, Tyumen became an important railhead for some years until the railway was extended further east. In the eastern reaches of the Ob basin, Tomsk on the Tom River was an important terminus.

Tyumen had its first steamboat in 1836, and the middle reaches of the Ob have been navigated by steamboats since 1845. The first steamboat on the Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's "Osnova", was launched in 1844; but the early starts were difficult, and it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing in the Ob system in the serious way. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s. In an attempt to extend the Ob navigable system even further, a system of canals, utilizing the Ket River, 560 miles (900 km) long in all, was built in the late 19th century to connect the Ob with the Yenisei, but soon abandoned as being uncompetitive with the railway.

The Trans-Siberian Railway, once completed, provided for more direct, year-round transportation in the east-west direction. But the Ob river system still remained important for connecting the huge expanses of Tyumen Oblast and Tomsk Oblast with the major cities along the Trans-Siberian route, such as Novosibirsk or Omsk. In the second half of the 20th century, construction of rail links to Labytnangi, Tobolsk, and the oil and gas cities of Surgut, and Nizhnevartovsk provided more railheads, but did not diminish the importance of the waterways for reaching places still not served by the rail.

A dam was built near Novosibirsk in 1956, which created the then-largest artificial lake in Siberia, called Novosibirsk Reservoir.

In the 1960s through 1980s, a gigantic project was contemplated by Soviet engineers and administrators to divert some of the waters of Ob and Irtysh to Kazakhstan and Soviet Central Asian republics, replenishing the Aral Sea as well. The project never left the drawing board, abandoned in 1986 due to economic and environmental considerations.^{[2] [3]}

Pollution[link]

In the early years of operation, the Mayak plant released vast quantities of radioactively contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant. These lakes drain into the Techa River, whose waters ultimately flow into the Ob River.^{[citation needed]}

Tributaries[link]

In 1916 there were 49 steamers on the Ob; 10 on the Yenesei. The Irtysh is the major tributary of the Ob. The larger tributaries along its course are:

In addition, the Nadym River and the Pur River flow into the Gulf of Ob and the Taz River into the Taz Estuary, a side arm of the Gulf of Ob.

Cities along the Ob[link]

From Cities along the river include:

Bridges[link]

From a confluence to a source:

• Surgut Bridge
• Railway bridge in Surgut
• Shegarsky bridge
• The bridge of "northern bypass" of Novosibirsk
• Dimitrov bridge in Novosibirsk
• First railway bridge across the Ob (Trans-Siberian Railway)
• Communal (October) bridge in Novosibirsk
• Metro bridge in Novosibirsk - longest Metro Bridge in the world
• Olovozavodskoy Bridge
• Komsomol railway bridge in Novosibirsk
• The bridge above the lock of Novosibirskaya HPP
• Railway bridge in Kamen-na-Obi
• Communal bridge (railway, automobile) in Barnaul
• New bridge in Barnaul

See also[link]

• Rivers of Russia

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ob River

• Information and a map of the Ob's watershed
• River Basin Report: Ob River

A river is a natural watercourse,^[1] usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including stream, creek, brook, rivulet, tributary and rill. There are no official definitions for generic terms, such as river, as applied to geographic features,^[2] although in some countries or communities a stream may be defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; one example is "burn" in Scotland and northeast England. Sometimes a river is said to be larger than a creek,^[3] but this is not always the case, because of vagueness in the language.^[4]

Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g., from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific study of rivers.

Topography[link]

Melting toe of Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada.

The water in a river is usually confined to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Flood plains may be very wide in relation to the size of the river channel. This distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred especially in urban areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing and industry.

The term upriver refers to the direction leading to the source of the river, which is against the direction of flow. Likewise, the term downriver describes the direction towards the mouth of the river, in which the current flows

The river channel typically contains a single stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water, producing a braided river. Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide, such as the South Island of New Zealand. They also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers and are also quite rare. They have multiple sinuous channels carrying large volumes of sediment.

The River Cam from the Green Dragon Bridge, Cambridge UK

Nile River delta, as seen from Earth orbit. The Nile is an example of a wave-dominated delta that has the classic Greek letter delta (Δ) shape after which river deltas were named.

A river flowing in its channel is a source of energy which acts on the river channel to change its shape and form. In 1757, the German hydrologist Albert Brahms empirically observed that the submerged weight of objects that may be carried away by a river is proportional to the sixth power of the river flow speed.^[5] (This formulation is also sometimes called Airy's law.^[6]) Thus, if the speed of flow were doubled, the flow would dislodge objects with 64 times as much submerged weight. In mountainous torrential zones this can be seen as erosion channels through hard rocks and the creation of sands and gravels from the destruction of larger rocks. In U-shaped glaciated valleys, the subsequent river valley can often easily be identified by the V-shaped channel that it has carved. In the middle reaches where the river may flow over flatter land, meanders may form through erosion of the river banks and deposition on the inside of bends. Sometimes the river will cut off a loop, shortening the channel and forming an oxbow lake or billabong. Rivers that carry large amounts of sediment may develop conspicuous deltas at their mouths, if conditions permit. Rivers whose mouths are in saline tidal waters may form estuaries.

Throughout the course of the river, the total volume of water transported downstream will often be a combination of the free water flow together with a substantial contribution flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underlie the river and its floodplain (called the hyporheic zone). For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow.

Subsurface streams[link]

Most but not all rivers flow on the surface. Subterranean rivers flow underground in caves or caverns. Such rivers are frequently found in regions with limestone geologic formations. Subglacial streams are the braided rivers that flow at the beds of glaciers and ice sheets, permitting meltwater to be discharged at the front of the glacier. Because of the gradient in pressure due to the overlying weight of the glacier, such streams can even flow uphill.

Permanence of flow[link]

An intermittent river (or ephemeral river) only flows occasionally and can be dry for several years at a time. These rivers are found in regions with limited or highly variable rainfall, or can occur because of geologic conditions such as having a highly permeable river bed. Some ephemeral rivers flow during the summer months but not in the winter. Such rivers are typically fed from chalk aquifers which recharge from winter rainfall. In the UK these rivers are called Bournes and give their name to place such as Bournemouth and Eastbourne.

Classification[link]

Rivers have been classified by many criteria including their topography, their biotic status, their relevance to white water rafting or canoeing activities.

Topographical classification[link]

Rivers can generally be classified as either alluvial, bedrock, or some mix of the two. Alluvial rivers have channels and floodplains that are self-formed in unconsolidated or weakly consolidated sediments. They erode their banks and deposit material on bars and their floodplains. Bedrock rivers form when the river downcuts through the modern sediments and into the underlying bedrock. This occurs in regions that have experienced some kind of uplift (thereby steepening river gradients) or in which a particular hard lithology causes a river to have a steepened reach that has not been covered in modern alluvium. Bedrock rivers very often contain alluvium on their beds; this material is important in eroding and sculpting the channel. Rivers that go through patches of bedrock and patches of deep alluvial cover are classified as mixed bedrock-alluvial.

Alluvial rivers can be further classified by their channel pattern as meandering, braided, wandering, anastomose, or straight. The morphology of an alluvial river reach is controlled by a combination of sediment supply, substrate composition, discharge, vegetation, and bed aggradation.

At the turn of the 20th century William Morris Davis devised the "cycle of erosion" method of classifying rivers based on their "age". Although Davis's system is still found in many books today, after the 1950s and 1960s it became increasingly criticized and rejected by geomorphologists. His scheme did not produce testable hypotheses and was therefore deemed non-scientific.^[7] Examples of Davis's river "ages" include:

• Youthful river: A river with a steep gradient that has very few tributaries and flows quickly. Its channels erode deeper rather than wider. Examples include the Brazos, Trinity and Ebro rivers.

• Mature river: A river with a gradient that is less steep than those of youthful rivers and flows more slowly. A mature river is fed by many tributaries and has more discharge than a youthful river. Its channels erode wider rather than deeper. Examples include the Mississippi, Saint Lawrence, Danube, Ohio, Thames and Paraná rivers.

• Old river: A river with a low gradient and low erosive energy. Old rivers are characterized by flood plains. Examples include the Yellow, Ganges, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Nile rivers.

• Rejuvenated river: A river with a gradient that is raised by tectonic uplift.

The way in which a river's characteristics vary between the upper course and lower course of a river are summarized by the Bradshaw model. Power-law relationships between channel slope, depth, and width are given as a function of discharge by "river regime".

Biotic classification[link]

There are very many systems of classification based on biotic conditions typically assigning classes from the most oligotrophic or unpolluted through to the most eutrophic or polluted.^[8] Other systems are based on a whole eco-system approach such as developed by the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment.^[9] In Europe, the requirements of the Water Framework Directive has led to the development of a wide range of classification methods including classifications based on fishery status^[10] A system of river zonation used in francophone communities^[11][12] divides rivers into three primary zones:

• The crenon is the uppermost zone at the source of the river. It is further divided into the eucrenon (spring or boil zone) and the hypocrenon (brook or headstream zone). These areas are characterized by low temperatures, reduced oxygen content and slow moving water.
• The rhithron is the upstream portion of the river that follows the crenon. It is characterized by relatively cool temperatures, high oxygen levels, and fast, turbulent flow.
• The potamon is the remaining downstream stretch of river. It is characterized by warmer temperatures, lower oxygen levels, slow flow and sandier bottoms.

Whitewater classification[link]

The International Scale of River Difficulty is used to rate the challenges of navigation—particularly those with rapids. Class I is the easiest and Class VI is the hardest.

Stream order classification[link]

The Strahler Stream Order ranks rivers based on the connectivity and hierarchy of contributing tributaries. Headwaters are first order while the Amazon River is twelfth order. Approximately 80% of the rivers and streams in the world are of the first and second order.

Uses[link]

Leisure activities on the River Avon at Avon Valley Country Park, Keynsham, United Kingdom. A boat giving trips to the public passes a moored private boat.

Rivers have been used as a source of water, for obtaining food, for transport, as a defensive measure, as a source of hydropower to drive machinery, for bathing, and as a means of disposing of waste.

Rivers have been used for navigation for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of navigation is found in the Indus Valley Civilization, which existed in northwestern Pakistan around 3300 BC.^[13] Riverine navigation provides a cheap means of transport, and is still used extensively on most major rivers of the world like the Amazon, the Ganges, the Nile, the Mississippi, and the Indus. Since river boats are often not regulated, they contribute a large amount to global greenhouse gas emissions, and to local cancer due to inhaling of particulates emitted by the transports.^[14][15]

In some heavily forested regions such as Scandinavia and Canada, lumberjacks use the river to float felled trees downstream to lumber camps for further processing, saving much effort and cost by transporting the huge heavy logs by natural means.

Rivers have been a source of food since pre-history.^[16] They can provide a rich source of fish and other edible aquatic life, and are a major source of fresh water, which can be used for drinking and irrigation. It is therefore no surprise to find most of the major cities of the world situated on the banks of rivers. Rivers help to determine the urban form of cities and neighbourhoods and their corridors often present opportunities for urban renewal through the development of foreshoreways such as riverwalks. Rivers also provide an easy means of disposing of waste-water and, in much of the less developed world, other wastes.

Watermill in Belgium

Fast flowing rivers and waterfalls are widely used as sources of energy, via watermills and hydroelectric plants. Evidence of watermills shows them in use for many hundreds of years such as in Orkney at Dounby Click Mill. Prior to the invention of steam power, water-mills for grinding cereals and for processing wool and other textiles were common across Europe. In the 1890s the first machines to generate power from river water were established at places such as Cragside in Northumberland and in recent decades there has been a significant increase in the development of large scale power generation from water, especially in wet mountainous regions such as Norway.

The coarse sediments, gravel, and sand, generated and moved by rivers are extensively used in construction. In parts of the world this can generate extensive new lake habitats as gravel pits re-fill with water. In other circumstances it can destabilise the river bed and the course of the river and cause severe damage to spawning fish populations which rely on stable gravel formations for egg laying.

In upland rivers, rapids with whitewater or even waterfalls occur. Rapids are often used for recreation, such as whitewater kayaking.

Rivers have been important in determining political boundaries and defending countries. For example, the Danube was a long-standing border of the Roman Empire, and today it forms most of the border between Bulgaria and Romania. The Mississippi in North America and the Rhine in Europe are major east-west boundaries in those continents. The Orange and Limpopo Rivers in southern Africa form the boundaries between provinces and countries along their routes.

Ecosystem[link]

The organisms in the riparian zone respond to changes in river channel location and patterns of flow. The ecosystem of rivers is generally described by the River continuum concept, which has some additions and refinements to allow for spatial (dams, waterfalls) and temporal (extensive flooding). The basic idea is that the river can be described as a system that is continuously changing along its length in the physical parameters, the availability of food particles and the composition of the ecosystem. The food (energy) that is the leftover of the upstream part is being utilized downstream.

The general pattern is that the first order streams contain particulate matter (decaying leaves from the surrounding forests), which is processed there by shredders like Plecoptera larvae. The leftovers of the shredders are utilized by collectors, such as Hydropsychidae, and further downstream algae that create the primary production become the main foodsource of the organisms. All changes are gradual and the distribution of each species can be described as a normal curve with the highest density where the conditions are optimal. In rivers succession is virtually absent and the composition of the ecosystem stays fixed in time.

Chemistry[link]

The chemistry of rivers is complex and depends on inputs from the atmosphere, the geology through which it travels and the inputs from man's activities. The chemistry of the water has a large impact on the ecology of that water for both plants and animals and it also affects the uses that may be made of the river water. Understanding and characterising river water chemistry requires a well designed and managed sampling and analysis.

Like many other Aquatic ecosystems, rivers too are under increasing threat of pollution. According to a study of the WWF's Global Freshwater Programme, the 10 most polluted rivers are: Ganges, Indus, Yangtze, Salween-Nu, Mekong-Lancang, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Río de la Plata, Danube, Nile-Lake Victoria, and the Murray-Darling.^[17]

Brackish water[link]

Some rivers generate brackish water by having their river mouth in the ocean. This, in effect creates a unique environment in which certain species are found.

Flooding[link]

Flash flooding caused by heavy rain falling in a short amount of time

Flooding is a natural part of a river's cycle. The majority of the erosion of river channels and the erosion and deposition on the associated floodplains occur during flood stage. In many developed areas, human activity has changed river channel form, altering different magnitudes and frequencies of flooding. Some examples of this are the building of levees, the straightening of channels, and the draining of natural wetlands. In many cases human activities in rivers and floodplains have dramatically increased the risk of flooding. Straightening rivers allows water to flow more rapidly downstream increasing the risk of flooding places further downstream. Building on flood plains removes flood storage which again exacerbates downstream flooding. The building of levees may only protect the area behind the levees and not those further downstream. Levees and flood-banks can also increase flooding upstream because of back-water pressure as the upstream water has to squeeze between the levees.

Flow[link]

Studying the flows of rivers is one aspect of hydrology.^[18]

Direction[link]

A common misconception is that most, or even all, rivers flow from north to south.^[19][20][21] Rivers in fact flow downhill regardless of compass direction. Sometimes downhill is from north to south, but equally it can be from south to north, and usually is a complex meandering path involving all directions of the compass.^[22][23][24] Three of the ten longest rivers in the world—the Nile, Yenisei, and Ob—flow north, as do other major rivers such as the Rhine, Mackenzie, and Nelson.

Rivers flowing downhill, from river source to river mouth, do not necessarily take the shortest path. For alluvial streams, straight and braided rivers have very low sinuosity and flow directly down hill, while meandering rivers flow from side to side across a valley. Bedrock rivers typically flow in either a fractal pattern, or a pattern that is determined by weaknesses in the bedrock, such as faults, fractures, or more erodible layers.

Rate[link]

Volumetric flow rate, also called discharge, volume flow rate, and rate of water flow, is the volume of water which passes through a given cross-section of the river channel per unit time. It is typically measured in cubic meters per second (cumec) or cubic feet per second (cfs), where 1 m³/s = 35.51 ft³/s; it is sometimes also measured in litres or gallons per second.

Volumetric flow rate can be thought of as the mean velocity of the flow through a given cross-section, times that cross-sectional area. Mean velocity can be approximated through the use of the Law of the Wall. In general, velocity increases with the depth (or hydraulic radius) and slope of the river channel, while the cross-sectional area scales with the depth and the width: the double-counting of depth shows the importance of this variable in determining the discharge through the channel.

Sediment yield[link]

Sediment yield is the total quantity of particulate matter (suspended or bedload) reaching the outlet of a drainage basin over a fixed time frame. Yield is usually expressed as kilograms per square kilometre per year. Sediment delivery processes are affected by a myriad of factors such as drainage area size, basin slope, climate, sediment type (lithology), vegetation cover, and human land use / management practices. The theoretical concept of the 'sediment delivery ratio' (ratio between yield and total amount of sediment eroded) captures the fact that not all of the sediment eroded within a catchment reaches the outlet (due to, for example, deposition on floodplains). Such storage opportunities are typically increased in catchments of larger size, thus leading to a lower yield and sediment delivery ratio.

Management[link]

River bank repair

Rivers are often managed or controlled to make them more useful, or less disruptive, to human activity.

• Dams or weirs may be built to control the flow, store water, or extract energy.
• Levees, known as dikes in Europe, may be built to prevent river water from flowing on floodplains or floodways.
• Canals connect rivers to one another for water transfer or navigation.
• River courses may be modified to improve navigation, or straightened to increase the flow rate.

River management is a continuous activity as rivers tend to 'undo' the modifications made by people. Dredged channels silt up, sluice mechanisms deteriorate with age, levees and dams may suffer seepage or catastrophic failure. The benefits sought through managing rivers may often be offset by the social and economic costs of mitigating the bad effects of such management. As an example, in parts of the developed world, rivers have been confined within channels to free up flat flood-plain land for development. Floods can inundate such development at high financial cost and often with loss of life.

Rivers are increasingly managed for habitat conservation, as they are critical for many aquatic and riparian plants, resident and migratory fishes, waterfowl, birds of prey, migrating birds, and many mammals.

Gallery[link]

• 

  The Irrawaddy River is in a fairly untamed condition, with wide-reaching "arms and fingers" leading off the main water-flow

• 

  A false-color satellite photograph of the Amazon River in Brazil

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: River

Look up river in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

	Environment portal
	Ecology portal

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Jeffrey W. Jacobs. "Rivers, Major World". Water Encyclopaedia. http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St/Rivers-Major-World.html. 
• Luna B. Leopold (1994). A View of the River. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-93732-5. OCLC 28889034. ISBN.  — a non-technical primer on the geomorphology and hydraulics of water.

External links[link]

• River Network - Connecting people, saving rivers (Environmental organization)

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Sir Paul McCartney MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM
McCartney performing in England, 2010
Background information
Birth name	James Paul McCartney
Born	(1942-06-18) 18 June 1942 (age 70) Liverpool, England, UK
Genres	Rock, pop, classical, electronica
Occupations	Musician, composer, music producer, film producer, businessman
Instruments	Vocals, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, drums, ukulele, mandolin, recorder
Years active	1957–present
Labels	Hear, Apple, Parlophone, Capitol, Columbia, Concord, EMI, One Little Indian, Vee-Jay
Associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Wings, The Fireman, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine
Website	www.paulmccartney.com
Notable instruments
Höfner 500/1 Rickenbacker 4001S Epiphone Texan Gibson Les Paul Epiphone Casino Martin D-28

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles.^[1] With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.

According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness.^[2] As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

He has composed film scores, classical and electronic music, and released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist. He has taken part in projects to help international charities, and has been an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism, and music education; he has been active in campaigns against landmines and seal hunting, and supported efforts such as Make Poverty History. His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 25,000 songs, including those written by Buddy Holly, as well as the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. He is one of the UK's wealthiest people, with an estimated fortune of £475 million in 2010. He has been married three times and is the father of five children.

Childhood[link]

McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool England, where his mother, Mary (née Mohin), had twelve years earlier, "satisfied her state registry requirements" for nursing, writes Beatles biographer Bob Spitz.^[3] His father James, or "Jim" McCartney, was absent at his son's birth due to his work as a volunteer fire fighter during World War II.^[3] McCartney has one brother, Michael, born 7 January 1944, and though they were baptised in their mother's Roman Catholic faith, "religion did not play a part in their upbringing" according to biographer Barry Miles, as McCartney's father was a Protestant turned agnostic.^[4]

In 1947 he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary School, by 1952 Joseph Williams Junior School,^[5] where he passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of ninety examinees, thus gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute.^[6] However, when he took his A-level exams at age nineteen, he passed only one subject – Art.^[7] In 1954, while taking the bus from his home in the suburb of Speke to the Institute, he met George Harrison,^[8] who had also passed the exam, meaning they could both go to a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, which the majority of pupils attended until they were eligible to work.^[9]

20 Forthlin Road now attracts large numbers of tourists.

In 1955 the McCartneys moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, where they lived through 1964.^[10] Paul was the first member of his family to own a car and his mother rode a bicycle to houses where she worked as a midwife; he describes an early memory of her leaving at "about three in the morning" the "streets ... thick with snow".^[11] On 31 October 1956, when he was fourteen, his mother died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer.^[12] The loss of his mother at fourteen was later a point of relation with John Lennon, whose mother Julia also died when he was young, after being struck by a car when he was seventeen.^[13]

McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s and encouraged his son to be musical. He kept an upright piano in the front room that he purchased from Epstein's North End Music Stores.^[14] His father, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba.^[15] Jim McCartney used to point out the bass parts in songs on the radio, and often took his son to local brass band concerts.^[16] Jim gave his son a nickel-plated trumpet for his fourteenth birthday,^[17] but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg,^[18] Paul traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, realising it would be too difficult to sing, "with a trumpet stuck in your mouth."^[17] Being left-handed, he found right-handed guitars difficult to play, but when he saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert, he realised that Whitman played left-handed with his right-handed guitar strung the opposite way. He then restrung his guitar and after some adjustments, found it easier to play.^[17] McCartney wrote his first song ("I Lost My Little Girl") on the Zenith, and an early tune which became, "When I'm Sixty-Four", on the piano, for which, despite his father's advice, he took only a couple of lessons for, preferring instead he says, to learn "by ear."^[14] He was heavily influenced by American rhythm and blues music, and has stated that Little Richard was his idol when he was in school. The first song he ever sang on a stage in public was "Long Tall Sally", at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition.^[19]

Musical career[link]

1957–1960: The Quarrymen[link]

McCartney met Lennon and the Quarrymen at the St. Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton on 6 July 1957, when he was fifteen years old.^[20] He joined the group soon after, and formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed in 1960 by Lennon's art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe on bass.^[21] By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including "Johnny and the Moondogs" and "the Silver Beetles", playing a tour of Scotland under that name with Johnny Gentle. They changed the name of the group to "the Beatles" in mid-August 1960 and recruited Pete Best on drums prior to the first of what would be five engagements in Hamburg, Germany.^[22]

1960–1970: The Beatles[link]

McCartney (left) in 1964 with Beatles bandmates Harrison and Lennon

From August 1960 the Beatles were booked by Allan Williams to perform in Hamburg, and during their extended stays there over the next two years, they performed as the resident group at two of Bruno Koschmider's clubs, the Indra, then the Kaiserkeller, and upon returns to Liverpool, at the Cavern Club.^[23] In 1961 Sutcliffe left the band, and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player.^[24] The Beatles recorded their first published music in Hamburg, performing as the backing band for Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie".^[25] The recording would later bring them to the attention of a key figure in their subsequent development and commercial success, Brian Epstein, who became their manager in January 1962.^[26] Epstein eventually negotiated a record contract for the group with Parlophone in May of that year.^[27] After replacing Best with Ringo Starr in August, they became increasingly popular in the UK during 1963 and in the US in 1964, in a frenzied adolation that became known as "Beatlemania",^[28] during which McCartney was dubbed, "the cute Beatle", according to Miles.^[29] In 1965 they were each appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).^[30]

After the recording of the Beatles hit "Yesterday" (1965), McCartney contacted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale London, to ask if they would record an electronic version of the song, but he never followed up.^[31] When visiting artist John Dunbar's flat in London, he would bring along tapes he had compiled at then girlfriend Jane Asher's home,^[32] mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that Dick James made into a demo for him.^[33] Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, he made tape loops by recording voices, guitars, and bongos on a Brenell tape recorder, and splicing the various loops together. He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the effects he wanted, some of which were later used on Beatles' recordings, such as "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966). He referred to the tapes as "electronic symphonies".^[34] In 1966 he rented a ground floor and basement flat from Starr at 34 Montagu Square, to be used as a small studio for spoken-word recordings by poets, writers (including William S. Burroughs) and avant-garde musicians.^[35] The Beatles' Apple Records then launched a sub-label, Zapple with Miles as its manager, ostensibly to release recordings of a similar aesthetic, although few releases would ultimately come of the endeavour as Apple and the Beatles slid into business and personal difficulties.^[35] After touring almost non-stop for a period of nearly four years, and giving more than 1,400 live performances internationally,^[36] the group gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour.^[37]

They continued to work in the recording studio and before their break-up in 1970 produced what some critics consider to be their finest material, including the innovative and widely influential albums Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (1968) and Abbey Road (1969).^[38] Between 1963 and 1970 the group released twenty-two UK singles and twelve LPs, of which seventeen of the singles and eleven of the LPs became number ones.^[39] The band topped the US Billboard Hot 100 twenty times, and recorded fourteen number one albums.^[40] Lennon and McCartney became one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.^[41] McCartney's contributions to the band's hit song's include: "Can't Buy Me Love" (1964), "Yesterday" (1965), Paperback Writer" and "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Hello, Goodbye" (1967), "Hey Jude" (1968), "Get Back (1969)", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" (1970).^[42]

In March 1969 he married Linda Eastman, whom he first met in May 1967. The couple had their first child together, Mary, named after Paul's late mother, in August 1969.^[43] In October 1969 a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash, but it was quickly proven false when a November Life magazine cover featured him and his family with the caption, "Paul is Still With Us."^[44]

1970–1981: Wings[link]

McCartney during a Wings concert, 1976

After the Beatles break-up in 1970 McCartney continued his musical career, releasing his first solo album, McCartney, in 1970, which contained the stand-out track "Maybe I'm Amazed", written for Linda.^[45] With the exception of some vocal contributions from her, it is a "one-man album with Paul playing all the instruments" himself, writes Beatles biographer Bill Harry.^[46] In 1971 Paul collaborated with Linda on a second album, Ram, a UK number one which included the co-written US number one hit song, "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".^[47] Later that year, the pair were joined by ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell to form the group Wings, and release their first album together, Wild Life. In September 1971 the McCartney family added a second child, Stella, named in honour of Linda's grandmothers.^[48]

In 1973 McCartney wrote Wings' first US number one, "My Love", included on their second LP, Red Rose Speedway, and his collaboration with Linda and former Beatles' producer George Martin resulted in the James Bond theme song and Wings hit, "Live and Let Die", which was nominated for an Oscar, and earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement.^[49] In 1974 Paul wrote a second US number one for Wings, "Band on the Run"; the acclaimed album of the same name, Wings' third, was a massive success that became their first platinum LP.^[50] They followed with the chart topping LPs, Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976).^[51] In September 1977 a third child was born to the McCartneys, a son they named James,^[52] and in November, the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre" was fast becoming "the best-selling single in UK history", writes Beatles biographer Peter Doggett.^[53] Achieving double the sales of the previous record holder, "She Loves You", the track would go on to sell 2.5 million copies, and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?".^[54] In 1977 he released Thrillington, an orchestral arrangement of Ram, under the pseudonym Percy "Thrills" Thrillington^[55], with a cover designed by Hipgnosis.^[56]

While London Town (1978) and Back to the Egg (1979) passed with little critical or commercial notice,^[57] the latter involved McCartney's collaboration with a rock supergroup dubbed, "the Rockestra", though credited to Wings, that included Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham.^[58] Active through 1981, Wings produced seven studio albums, five of which topped the US charts,^[59] as well as their live triple LP, Wings over America,^[60] one of few live albums ever to achieve the top spot in America.^[61] They also recorded six US number one singles including, "Listen to What the Man Said", "Silly Love Songs, "With a Little Luck", and "Coming Up".^[62]

1982–1989[link]

In 1980 he released his second solo LP, the self-produced McCartney II, and as with his first, he composed all the music and performed the instrumentation himself. The album contained the hit songs "Coming Up", "Waterfalls", and "Temporary Secretary".^[63] In 1982 he collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the Martin produced number one hit, "Ebony and Ivory", included on McCartney's Tug of War LP, and with Michael Jackson on "The Girl Is Mine" from Thriller.^[64] The following year he worked with Jackson on the US number one, "Say Say Say", and he earned a UK number one with the title track of his LP release that year, "Pipes of Peace".^[65]