Tarim River

The Tarim River (Mandarin Tǎlǐmù Hé, 塔里木河; Uyghur: تارىم دەرياسى, Тарим дәряси), known in Sanskrit as the Śītā is the principal river of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China. It gives its name to the great Tarim Basin between the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains systems (the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau) of Central Asia.

It is the longest inland river in China with an annual flow of 4 to 6 billion cubic metres (3,200,000 to 4,900,000 acre·ft) or 158.5 cubic metres per second (5,600 cu ft/s). Its basin is home to nearly 10 million Uyghur and other ethnic minorities.

The Tarim river and most of its tributaries flow down from the Himalayas. The name Tarim is applied to the river formed by the union of the Aksu River, flowing from the north, and Yarkand River, coming from the southwest, near the Aral City in western Xinjiang. The third river, the Khotan River comes to the same junction area from the south, but it is usually dry at this location, as it has to cross the Taklamakan Desert to get here.

Another river of western Xinjiang is the Kashgar River, which falls (at least theoretically, i.e., when it has water in it) into the Yarkand River some 37 kilometres (23 mi) upstream from the Yarkand's merger with the Aksu. By another definition, however, Tarim starts at the Kashgar/Yarkand merger, and Aksu, then, is considered just a tributary of the Tarim.

The Tarim flows in an eastward direction around the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. It receives another tributary, the Muzat River from the north; however, out of these four rivers (Aksu, Yarkand, Khotan, and Muzart), only the Aksu flows into the Tarim year-round It is the Tarim's most important tributary, supplying 70–80 percent of its water volume.

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