The Chona ( rus, Чона; sah, Чуона) is a river in the
Sakha Republic
Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of roughly 1 million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eas ...
(Yakutia) and
Irkutsk Oblast,
Russia. It is a right hand tributary of the
Vilyuy, and is long, with a
drainage basin of .
The
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society (russian: Ру́сское географи́ческое о́бщество «РГО»), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection wi ...
organized an expedition in 1853–55 to survey the
orography, geology and population of the
Vilyuy and Chona basins.
Course
The river begins in the
Lena Plateau, part of the
Central Siberian Plateau, at an elevation of . It flows roughly northeastwards forming rapids which make the river not navigable. The lowest of its course were flooded by the Vilyuy Reservoir after the
Vilyuy Dam
The Vilyuy Dam (russian: Вилюйская ГЭС) is a large dam and hydroelectric power station on the Vilyuy River in Chernyshevsky, Sakha Republic, Russia. The dam was built between 1964 and 1967 to provide power for diamond mines in the are ...
was built in 1967. The river freezes between October and late May.
The main tributaries of the Chona are the
Vakunayka on the right and the
Dekimde on the left. There are no permanent settlements by the Chona.
[Russia. Topographic map P-50-XIX, XX . Scale: 1: 200 000]
See also
*
List of rivers of Russia
References
{{Reflist
External links
Geography - Yakutia Organized
Rivers of Irkutsk Oblast
Rivers of the Sakha Republic