The Magdalena River (Spanish: Río Magdalena, Spanish pronunciation:[ˈri.omaɣðaˈlena]; less commonly Rio Grande de la Magdalena)[5] is the main riverofColombia, flowing northward about 1,528 kilometres (949 mi) through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of its lower reaches, in spite of the shifting sand bars at the mouth of its delta, as far as Honda, at the downstream base of its rapids. It flows through the Magdalena River Valley.
Its drainage basin covers a surface of 273,000 square kilometres (105,000 sq mi), which is 24% of the country's area and where 66% of its population lives.
The Magdalena River is the largest river system of the northern Andes, with a length of 1,612 km.[6] Its headwaters are in the south of Colombia, where the Andean subranges Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental separate, in Huila Department. The river runs east then
north in a great valley between the two cordilleras. It reaches the coastal plain at about nine degrees north, then runs west for about 100 km (62 mi), then north again, reaching the Caribbean Sea at the city of Barranquilla in the zone known as Bocas de Ceniza.
The most productive fishing areas in Colombia are in the basin,[12] but there has been a drastic decrease in the annual harvest with a fall of about 90% between 1975 and 2008.[13] The primary threats are pollution (such as human waste, mining, farming and deforestation causing siltation) and habitat loss (such a dams). Additional dams are being constructed, including El Quimbo (opened in 2015) and Ituango (expected operational in 2018), which has caused some controversy.[14][15] As a result of the pollution, heavy metals have also been detected in some commercially important fish in the river.[16] As of 2002[update], 19 fish species in the river basin were recognized as threatened.[12]
In addition, there is a possible risk posed by invasivehippopotamus. Originally imported by Pablo Escobar, these hippopotami became feral following his demise, and have since expanded beyond their original home on Hacienda Napoles into nearby regions of the Magdalena River.[19][20]
Due to its geographical position in the north of South America, the Magdalena River was since precolumbian times a route towards the interior of present-day Colombia and Ecuador. Several Carib-speaking peoples such as the Panche and the Yariguí ascended through the western bank of the river, while its eastern portion was inhabited by the Muisca civilization, which called the river Yuma.
Likewise, the Spanish conquistadores who arrived to today's Colombia early in the 16th century used the river to push to the wild and mountainous inland after Rodrigo de Bastidas discovered and named the river on April 1, 1501. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the river was the only transport link communicating Bogotá with the Caribbean Sea port Cartagena de Indias and thus with Europe.
In 1825, the Congress of Colombia awarded a concession to establish steam navigation in the Magdalena River to Juan Bernardo Elbers,[21] but his company closed shortly after. By 1845, steamboats regularly travelled on the river[22] until 1961, when the last steamers ceased operation.[21]
The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel García Márquez, is a fictionalized account of the final voyage of Simón Bolívar down the Magdalena River, where he revisits many cities and villages along the river.
InMagdalena: River of Dreams (Knopf, 2020), Canadian writer, anthropologist, and explorer Wade Davis travels the length of the river by boat, on foot, by car, and on horseback combining descriptions of nature with episodes from Colombian history.[23]
^ ab"Chapter 14"(PDF). The Pacific and Caribbean Rivers of Colombia: Water Discharge, Sediment Transport and Dissolved Loads. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2012-03-25. Retrieved 2011-07-13.
^Restrepo, Juan D.; Escobar, Rogger; Tosic, Marko (February 2018). "Fluvial fluxes from the Magdalena River into Cartagena Bay, Caribbean Colombia: Trends, future scenarios, and connections with upstream human impacts". Geomorphology. 302: 92–105. doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2016.11.007. hdl:10784/26918.
^Maldonado-Ocampo; Vari; and Usma (2008). Checklist of the Freshwater Fishes of Colombia. Biota Colombiana 9: 143–237.
^Román-Valencia; Ruiz; Taphorn; Mancera-Rodriguez; and García-Alzate (2013). Three new species of Hemibrycon (Characiformes: Characidae) from the Magdalena River Basin, Colombia. Rev Biol Trop. 61(3): 1365–1387.
^Taphorn; Armbruster; Villa-Navarro; and Ray (2013). Trans-Andean Ancistrus (Siluriformes: Loricariidae). Zootaxa 3641(4): 343–370.
^Ballen; and Mojica (2014). A new trans-Andean Stick Catfish of the genus Farlowella Eigenmann & Eigenmann, 1889 (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) with the first record of the genus for the río Magdalena Basin in Colombia. Zootaxa 3765(2): 134–142.
^ abGranado-Lorencio; Serna; Carvajal; Jiménez-Segura; Gulfo; and Alvarez (2012). Regionally nested patterns of fish assemblages in floodplain lakes of the Magdalena river (Colombia). Ecol Evol. 2(6): 1296–1303.
^Lasso; Agudelo-Córdoba: Jiménez-Segura; Ramírez-Gil; Morales-Betancourt; Ajiaco-Martínez; Gutiérrez; Usma-Oviedo; Muñoz-Torres; and Sanabria-Ochoa (2011). I. Catálogo de los recursos pesqueros continentales de Colombia. Serie Editorial Recursos Hidrobiológicos y Pesqueros Continentales de Colombia. Bogotá (Colombia): Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt (IAvH).
^Noreña; Arenas; Murillo; Guío; and Méndez (2012). Heavy metals (Cd, Pb and Ni) in fish species commercially important from Magdalena river, Tolima tract, Colombia. Tumbaga 2(7): 61–76.
