article · Water
This research provides a multidisciplinary synthesis of the Congo River's general hydrology, drawing on over a century of studies. It highlights the river's exceptional hydrological regularity, with an average interannual flow of 40,500 m3 s−1, noting the wet decade of the 1960s as its main anomaly. Despite this regularity, significant spatial variations exist, such as flow reduction in the Ubangi basin affecting navigation. Annually, approximately 88 million tonnes of material are exported from the basin to the Atlantic Ocean, with chemical weathering slightly exceeding physical erosion. The study also presents an original hydrological classification of right bank tributaries, explaining regimes based on vegetation and lithology. It identifies the Batéké plateau's stable hydrological regimes and pristine waters, and provides the first calculated hydrological regime for the "Cuvette Centrale".
Understanding the Congo River's hydrology and sediment transport is crucial for managing one of the world's largest river systems. This research provides foundational data on its flow patterns, material fluxes, and regional variations, which are essential for environmental conservation, water resource management, and addressing challenges like navigation.
The abstract does not indicate an application pathway for commercialisation. It focuses on synthesising existing knowledge and identifying areas for further research, such as the need for remote sensing and numerical modelling to address data scarcity.
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Although the Congo Basin is still one of the least studied river basins in the world, this paper attempts to provide a multidisciplinary but non-exhaustive synthesis on the general hydrology of the Congo River by highlighting some points of interest and some particular results obtained over a century of surveys and scientific studies. The Congo River is especially marked by its hydrological regularity only interrupted by the wet decade of 1960, which is its major anomaly over nearly 120 years of daily observations. Its interannual flow is 40,500 m3 s−1. This great flow regularity should not hide important spatial variations. As an example, we can cite the Ubangi basin, which is the most northern and the most affected by a reduction in flow, which has been a cause for concern since 1970 and constitutes a serious hindrance for river navigation. With regard to material fluxes, nearly 88 × 106 tonnes of material are exported annually from the Congo Basin to the Atlantic Ocean, composed of 33.6 × 106 tonnes of TSS, 38.1 × 106 tonnes of TDS and 16.2 × 106 tonnes of DOC. In this ancient flat basin, the absence of mountains chains and the extent of its coverage by dense rainforest explains that chemical weathering (10.6 t km−2 year−1 of TDS) slightly predominates physical erosion (9.3 t km−2 year−1 of TSS), followed by organic production (4.5 t km−2 year−1 of DOC). As the interannual mean discharges are similar, it can be assumed that these interannual averages of material fluxes, calculated over the longest period (2006–2017) of monthly monitoring of its sedimentology and bio-physical-chemistry, are therefore representative of the flow record available since 1902 (with the exception of the wet decade of 1960). Spatial heterogeneity within the Congo Basin has made it possible to establish an original hydrological classification of right bank tributaries, which takes into account vegetation cover and lithology to explain their hydrological regimes. Those of the Batéké plateau present a hydroclimatic paradox with hydrological regimes that are among the most stable on the planet, but also with some of the most pristine waters as a result of the intense drainage of an immense sandy-sandstone aquifer. This aquifer contributes to the regularity of the Congo River flows, as does the buffer role of the mysterious “Cuvette Centrale”. As the study of this last one sector can only be done indirectly, this paper presents its first hydrological regime calculated by inter-gauging station water balance. Without neglecting the indispensable in situ work, the contributions of remote sensing and numerical modelling should be increasingly used to try to circumvent the dramatic lack of field data that persists in this basin.
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DOI: 10.3390/w12092613
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