Pinpointing the sources and measuring the lengths of the principal rivers of the world

Cultures throughout the world are associating with the rivers. People dependupon the rivers and their tributaries for food, water, transport, and many otheraspects of their daily lives. Unfortunately, human beings have not calculated theaccurate lengths for the great rivers even today. The lengths of the rivers are verydifferent in popular textbooks, magazines, atlases and encyclopedias, etc. Toaccurately determine the lengths of the principal rivers of the world, thecombination of satellite image analysis and field investigations to the sourceregions is proposed in this paper. The lengths of the Nile, Amazon, Yangtze,Mississippi, Yellow, Ob, Yenisey, Amur, Congo and Mekong, with lengths over orclose to 5000 km, were calculated using the proposed method. The results mayrepresent the most reliable and accurate lengths of the principal rivers of theworld that are currently achievable.