The Fave () is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in the eastern region of

Lorraine Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gr ...

. It flows in the

Vosges département Vosges () is a department in the Grand Est region in Northeastern France. It covers part of the Vosges mountain range, after which it is named. Vosges consists of three arrondissements, 17 cantons and 507 communes, including Domrémy-la-Pucell ...

. It is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of the Meurthe, thus a sub-tributary of the

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...

and of the

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...

. It is long.

Geography

The Fave rises at Lubine at the foot of

Climont Climont, formerly called "Clivemont" in Old French, and "Winberg" in Old Alsatian, is a conical sandstone peak of the Vosges mountains. The mountain, with a cut-off shape, is known from afar by walkers and modern-day travellers. Situated today i ...

in the Vosges massif, and flows into the Meurthe at Sainte-Marguerite at the end of its course. It flows through the grassland of the communes of Colroy, Provenchères-sur-Fave, Le Beulay, Frapelle and Neuvillers, passing by the hamlet of Vanifosse in the Pair-et-Grandrupt commune before Remomeix. Its principal tributaries are the "Sainte-Catherine" stream which comes out of

La Grande-Fosse La Grande-Fosse () is a commune in the Vosges department in Grand Est in northeastern France. Points of interest * Arboretum du Col du Las See also *Communes of the Vosges department The following is a list of the 507 communes of the Vosges ...

, the "Bleu" which flows from Lusse and the "Morte" which flows from Ban-de-Laveline, this latter augmented by the waters of the "Blanc Rû". The river's name is found in the title of two groupings of communes, the ''Communauté de communes de la Fave'' and the ''Communauté de communes de la Fave et de la Meurthe''.

History and toponymy

The river shares its name with the village of Fave, which spread over the middle of the valley well before the 12th century. Having become a hamlet after the 16th century, it was left only a ruin after the

Thirty Years War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an es ...

. According to old mountain-dwellers, the source of the Fave was worshipped at Fouillepré upstream of Lubine. According to this cultural model, all the modest tributaries upstream of Lubine, which come from Climont, les Osières, la Jambe de fer and other slopes or small valleys, were referred to as ''"petites Faves"'' (little Faves). Their confluence created the Fave. A probable etymology of the word Fave is from the Old French meaning water which digs or searches. This bears resemblance to the

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium ...

''"murta"'' meaning to dig, gully or laugh, which gave rise to the Meurthe river, to the Morte (a tributary of the Fave which joins in the channels of the low grassland between Neuvillers and Vanifosse), and to the Mortagne, which flows into the Meurthe further downstream. Downstream of Colroy the river has been intensively built on. A part of its waters were diverted with barrages to feed hydraulic installations or ''mères-royes'', a local name for the main fittings used to irrigate humid grassland. More tenuous constructions aided log floating.

Hydrology

The Fave is a substantial river considering the relative smallness of its watershed. The mean interannual flow rate or discharge at its confluence with the Meurthe is for a watershed of . The

runoff curve number The runoff curve number (also called a curve number or simply CN) is an empirical parameter used in hydrology for predicting direct runoff or infiltration from rainfall excess. The curve number method was developed by the USDA Natural Resources Con ...

in the watershed is , which is high, almost twice that of the average of France with all watersheds included, and also larger than that of the French Moselle basin by a wide margin. In fact the Moselle's runoff at

Hauconcourt Hauconcourt (; ) is a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. See also * Communes of the Moselle department The following is a list of the 725 communes of the Moselle department of France. The communes coop ...

, near where it exits France, rises to only .Banque Hydro - Station A7930610 - The Moselle at Hauconcourt
(Do not tick the box "Station en service") The specific flow rate of the Fave comes out at 18.59 litres per second per square kilometre of watershed.

Flora and fauna

Fish species found in the river include

trout Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salmoni ...

perch Perch is a common name for fish of the genus ''Perca'', freshwater gamefish belonging to the family Percidae. The perch, of which three species occur in different geographical areas, lend their name to a large order of vertebrates: the Percif ...

carp Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...

roach Roach may refer to: Animals * Cockroach, various insect species of the order Blattodea * Common roach (''Rutilus rutilus''), a fresh and brackish water fish of the family Cyprinidae ** ''Rutilus'' or roaches, a genus of fishes * California roach ...

. Also present are

water scorpion Nepidae is a family of exclusively aquatic Heteropteran insects in the order Hemiptera. They are commonly called water scorpions for their superficial resemblance to scorpions, due to their raptorial forelegs and the presence of a long slender p ...

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...

s, caddisfly larvae, fish fry,

red-eared slider The red-eared slider or red-eared terrapin (''Trachemys scripta elegans'') is a subspecies of the pond slider (''Trachemys scripta''), a semiaquatic turtle belonging to the family Emydidae. It is the most popular pet turtle in the United States, ...

s, rare

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

crayfish Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as crawfish, craydids, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, rock lobsters, mu ...

leech Leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass Hirudinea within the phylum Annelida. They are closely related to the oligochaetes, which include the earthworm, and like them have soft, muscular segmented bodie ...

es and

dragonfly A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threate ...

. Plants include

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...

species and aquatic

equisetopsida Equisetidae is one of the four subclasses of Polypodiopsida (ferns), a group of vascular plants with a fossil record going back to the Devonian. They are commonly known as horsetails. They typically grow in wet areas, with whorls of needle-like ...

References

External links

* * {{cite web , url= http://www2.lorraine.ecologie.gouv.fr/Eau_quantite/cataloguedebits/debitsobserves/moselleamont/fave.pdf , title= Typical flow rates of the Fave , language= fr , access-date= 2011-12-16 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20061121221835/http://www.lorraine.ecologie.gouv.fr/Eau_quantite/cataloguedebits/debitsobserves/moselleamont/fave.pdf , archive-date= 2006-11-21 , url-status= dead Rivers of Vosges (department) Rivers of France Rivers of Grand Est