Vistula River, Toruń, Kuyavian-Pomeranian, Poland, Europe

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• published: 11 Aug 2013
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The Vistula is the longest river in Poland, at 1,047 km (651 miles) in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is 194,424 km2 (75,068 sq mi), of which 168,699 km2 (65,135 sq mi) lies within Poland (splitting the country in half). The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in the south of Poland, 1,220 meters (4,000 ft) above sea level in the Silesian Beskids (western part of Carpathian Mountains), where it begins with the White Little Vistula (Biała Wisełka) and the Black Little Vistula (Czarna Wisełka). It then continues to flow over the vast Polish plains, passing several large Polish cities along its way, including Kraków, Sandomierz, Warsaw, Płock, Włocławek, Toruń, Bydgoszcz, Świecie, Grudziądz, Tczew and Gdańsk. It empties into the Vistula Lagoon or directly into the Gdańsk Bay of the Baltic Sea with a delta and several branches (Leniwka, Przekop, Śmiała Wisła, Martwa Wisła, Nogat and Szkarpawa). The name was first recorded by Pliny in AD 77 in his Natural History. He uses Vistula (4.52, 4.89) with an alternative spelling, Vistillus (3.06). The Vistula River ran into the Mare Suebicum, which is today known as the Baltic Sea. The root of the name Vistula is Indo-European ultimately from proto-Indo-European. The diminutive endings -ila, -ula, were used in many Indo-European language groups, including Latin (see Ursula). In writing about the Vistula River and its peoples, Ptolemy uses the Greek spelling, "Ouistoula". Other ancient sources spell it "Istula". Pomponius Mela refers to the "Visula" (Book 3) and Ammianus Marcellinus to the "Bisula" (Book 22), both of which names lack the -t-. Jordanes (Getica 5 & 17) uses "Viscla" while the Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith refers to it as the "Wistla". 12th century Polish chronicler Wincenty Kadłubek called the river Vandalus from the Lithuanian "vanduo", meaning "water". Jan Długosz in his Annales seu cronicae incliti called the Vistula "White river": "a nationibus orientalibus Polonis vicinis, ab aquae condorem Alba aqua ... nominatur". The reaches of the Vistula are composed of three stretches: upper, from its sources to the city of Sandomierz; centre, from Sandomierz to the mouth of Narew and Bug; and bottom, from mouth of Narew till Vistula's own delta at the Baltic. The Vistula river basin covers 194,424 km² (in Poland 168,700 km²); its average altitude rising to 270 m above sea level. In addition, the majority of its river basin (55%) is located at heights of 100 to 200 m above sea level; over 3/4 of the river basin ranges from 100 -- 300 m in altitude. The highest point of the river basin lies at 2655 m (Gerlach Peak in the Tatra mountains). One of the features of the river basin of the Vistula is its asymmetry - in great measure resulting from the tilting direction of the Central-European Lowland toward the north-west, the direction of the flow of glacial waters, as well as considerable predisposition of its older base. The asymmetry of the river basin (right-hand to left-hand side) is 73-27%. The most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BC, is called the Vistulian glaciation or Weichselian glaciation in regard to north-central Europe. The river forms a wide delta called the Żuławy Wiślane around the town of Biała Góra near Sztum, about 50 km from the mouth, splitting into two branches: the Leniwka (left) and the Nogat (right). In the city of Gdańsk the Head of the Leniwka branch separates again into the Szkarpawa branch, for the purpose of flood control closed to the east with a lock. The so-called Dead Wisła divides again into the Przegalinie branch flowing into Gdańsk Bay. Until the 14th century the Vistula was divided into a main eastern branch, the Elbląg Vistula, and the smaller western branch, the Gdańsk Vistula. Since 1371 the Vistula of Gdańsk is the river's main artery. After the flood in 1840 an additional branch formed called the Śmiała Wisła ("Bold Vistula"). In 1890 through 1895, additional waterworks were carried out up the Świbna. According to flood studies carried out by Professor Zbigniew Pruszak, who is the co-author of the scientific paper Implications of SLR and further studies carried out by scientists attending Poland's Final International ASTRA Conference, and predictions stated by climate scientists at the climate change pre-summit in Copenhagen, it is highly likely most of the Vistula Delta region (which is below sea level) will be flooded due to the sea level rise caused by climate change by 2100. The history of the River Vistula and her valley spans over 2 million years. The river is connected to the geological period called the Quaternary, in which distinct cooling of the climate took place. In the last million years, an ice sheet entered the area of Poland eight times, bringing along with it changes of reaches of the river. In warmer periods, when the ice sheet retreated, the Vistula deepened and widened its valley.