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Lempa River

River that flows through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras

Summary

River that flows through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras

Field	Value
name	Lempa River
image	Lempa River.jpg
image_caption	Sunset over the Lempa river
map	Lempa River bridge.jpg
map_size	300
map_caption	Railroad Bridge (FENADESAL) over the Lempa river, as seen from the Carretera del Litoral highway bridge (El Salvador)
pushpin_map	El Salvador
pushpin_map_size	300
subdivision_type1	Countries
subdivision_name1
length	422 km
discharge1_location	Cuscatlan bridge
discharge1_avg	362 m3/s
source1	Sierra Madre
source1_location	Olopa, Chiquimula, Guatemala
source1_coordinates
source1_elevation	1200 m
mouth	Pacific Ocean
mouth_location	El Playón, Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador
mouth_coordinates
mouth_elevation	0 m
basin_size	18246 km2

The Lempa River () is a 422 km river in Central America. It is a transboundary river shared by El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Geography

Its sources are located in between the Sierra Madre and the Sierra del Merendón mountain ranges in southern Guatemala, near the town of Olopa. In Guatemala, the river is called Olopa River and flows southwards for 30.4 km before entering Honduras and changing its name to Lempa River at . In Honduras, it flows through the Ocotepeque Department for 31.4 km, and crosses the border with El Salvador at the town of Citalá () in the Chalatenango Department. The river continues its course for another 360 km in El Salvador, flowing in a generally southwards direction until it reaches the Pacific Ocean in the San Vicente Department. The river forms a small part of the international boundary between El Salvador and Honduras.

The river's watershed covers 18246 km2 of which 10255 km2, that is, 56.56% of the watershed territory, lie in El Salvador; 5696 km2 in Honduras; and 2295 km2 in Guatemala. 49% of El Salvador's territory is covered by the Lempa River basin, and 77.5% of the Salvadoran population lives in cities, towns, and villages located within the basin territory, including the capital city of San Salvador.

Hydroelectricity

15 de Septiembre Hydroelectric dam over the Rio Lempa, El Salvador

There are several hydroelectric dams along the river. In El Salvador, there is the Guayojo Dam, the Cerrón Grande Hydroelectric Dam, the 5 de Noviembre Dam, and the 15 de Septiembre Dam. The latter can be easily seen from the Pan-American highway.

References

Hernández, Walter. (2005). "Nacimiento y Desarrollo del río Lempa". Servicio Nacional de Estudios Territoriales (SNET).
Montoya, Ainhoa. (2024). "Troubling environmental governance: citizen legal experiments with transboundary commons". Oxford Development Studies.
"Mapas de Recursos Hídricos". Servicio Nacional de Estudios Territoriales (SNET).
(1998). "Water Resources Assessment of El Salvador". United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

rivers-of-el-salvador rivers-of-guatemala rivers-of-honduras international-rivers-of-north-america el-salvador–honduras-border border-rivers

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