Lena River

The Lena is the easternmost of the three major rivers that run into the Arctic Ocean in Siberia (the other two being the Ob and the Yenisey). The majority of the catchment is covered in permafrost, with 77 percent of it being continuous. It stretches for 4,294 kilometers (2,668 miles) and drains 2,490,000 square kilometers (960,000 sq mi). The Lena is the world's eleventh-longest river and Russia's longest river entirely within its borders.

The Lena flows northeast through the Lena-Angara Plateau, joining the Kirenga, Vitim, and Olyokma at an elevation of 1,640 meters (5,381 feet) at its source in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau, 7 kilometers (4 miles) west of Lake Baikal. It runs north from Yakutsk into the Central Yakutian Lowland, where it is joined by the Aldan, its right-hand tributary, and the Vilyuy, its most important left-hand tributary. After that, it flows between the Kharaulakh Range (part of the Verkhoyansk Range) in the east and the Chekanovsky Ridge in the west, bending westward and northward. It expands into a vast delta as it travels north, eventually ending at the Laptev Sea, a split of the Arctic Ocean south-west of the New Siberian Islands. The Lena Delta covers 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) and is divided into seven main branches, the most important of which is the Bykovsky channel, which is located to the east.

The Lena river basin covers 2,490,000 square kilometers (960,000 square miles), with an average annual discharge of 489 cubic kilometers. Gold has been discovered in the Vitim and Olyokma sands, while mammoth tusks have been discovered in the delta.

Length: 4400 km