Yellow River Map with its Tributaries, and River Basin

The Yellow River is the second-longest river in China. It is also the sixth-longest river system in the world. The Chinese name of this river is Huang He. The estimated length of the river is 5,464 km (3,395 mi). This originates at elevation 15000 feet (4600 meters) at eh Bayan Har Mountains and drains into the Bohai Sea. This river is named Yellow River because of its color and because it carries out yellow color sediment from the Loess Plateau. Frequent and heavy flooding in the river caused the death of millions of people along the Yellow River. The deadliest floods in the history of the Yangtze River were floods in 1332-33 during the Yuan dynasty, in 1887 flood during the Qing dynasty killing 900000-2million people, and in 1931 flood killed 1 to 4 million people of China. Thus, this river is also known as the “Sorrow of China“.

Tributaries of Yellow River

The Yellow River map shows that this river does not have much bigger tributaries in the eastern and western sections of the river. Only the central part has a wider basin, which includes the Ordos Desert and the Loess Plateau. This river forms great bends toward the north, then to the east, and then toward the south. In this section, the Fen River and the Wei River are the most important tributaries of the Yellow River.

Yellow River basin

Yellow River map shows that it flows from the west to the east. Thus, the Yellow River Basin area (Green colored) is elongated horizontally. It has a narrow basin area in the west and the east and a wider area at the center. The Yellow River basin is the third largest basin in China. The basin size is 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles).