The Río Grande de Santiago, or Santiago River, is a river in western Mexico. It flows westwards from Lake Chapala via
Ocotlán through the states of
Jalisco and
Nayarit to empty into the Pacific Ocean. It one of the longest rivers in
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
, measuring up long.
Geography
The river begins at
Lake Chapala via
Ocotlán and continues roughly north-west through the
Sierra Madre Occidental
The Sierra Madre Occidental is a major mountain range system of the North American Cordillera, that runs northwest–southeast through northwestern and western Mexico, and along the Gulf of California. The Sierra Madre is part of the American ...
, receiving the
Verde
Verde in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian means " Green".
It may refer to:
Places
*Aguas Verdes, Peru
* Verde Beach, Portugal
*Camp Verde, Arizona, United States
*Campina Verde, Brazil
*Cape Verde
*Castro Verde, Portugal
*Fort Verde St ...
,
Juchipila,
Bolaños,
Huaynamota,
Mololoa, and other tributaries.
The Río Grande de Santiago descends over 1700 meters between Lake Chapala and the sea. Downstream from Lake Chapala the river and its major tributaries have carved deep narrow canyons, or barrancas, which can be 600 meters lower than the surrounding plateau. The lower elevation and year-round moisture in the canyon bottoms sustain forests, which include many coastal tropical species not found on the plateaus. The
Barranca de Oblatos
Barranca de Oblatos ( en, Oblatos Canyon), also known as Barranca de Huentitán, is a canyon carved by the Río Grande de Santiago in Mexico in the state of Jalisco. It lies on the northeast side of the municipality of Guadalajara and on the edg ...
or Barranca de Huentitán is a protected area popular with residents of the city of
Guadalajara, which lies on the plateau immediately south of the barranca.
At
La Yesca, the
La Yesca Dam was completed in 2012 and the
El Cajón Dam was completed downstream in 2007. Below El Cajón, the
Aguamilpa Dam was completed in 1993, creating a reservoir covering a large part of the territory of the municipality of
El Nayar in
Nayarit.
From Aguamilpa, the river descends to the coastal lowlands, passing by
Santiago Ixcuintla and empties into the Pacific Ocean, northwest of
San Blas, in Nayarit.
The Santiago River alone is reported to be 269 miles long. It is viewed by some sources as a continuation of the
Lerma River, which flows into Lake Chapala and at 466 miles long is one of Mexico's longest rivers. Together the Lerma–Santiago river system is a little over 600 miles long.
Fauna
The
remote chub (''Algansea avia''),
mountain chub (''Algansea monticola''), and
Chapala catfish (''Ictalurus ochoterenai'') are
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...
to the Río Grande de Santiago and its tributaries.
[Contreras Balderas, Salvador and Jennifer Hales. "Rio Santiago". Freshwater Ecoregions of the World. Accessed 7 September 2021]
/ref>
Pollution
Mexico possesses a small percentage (0.1%) of the world's freshwater reserve. According to an article named ''Water use (and abuse) and its effects on the crater-lakes of Valle de Santiago, Mexico'' “most Mexican lakes are in an advanced state of desiccation or senescence, with volumes and surface area greatly reduced because of human activities”. Some examples of these damaging activities are wood cutting, inflow diversion for agriculture, groundwater over extraction, pollution and eutrophication.
Less than fifty years ago the river was a place to fish, bathe, and swim. It is now a river full of pollutants. The Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua (IMTA) found over a thousand different chemicals in the main channel and its tributaries. These substances included semi-volatile and volatile organic compounds, such as phthalates (hormonal disruptors), phenol
Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it r ...
s (compounds that affect neuronal development), toluene
Toluene (), also known as toluol (), is a substituted aromatic hydrocarbon. It is a colorless, water-insoluble liquid with the smell associated with paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative, consisting of a methyl group (CH3) ...
(a neurotoxin), and carcinogenic
A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that promotes carcinogenesis (the formation of cancer). This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes. Several radioactive sub ...
flame retardants. This river is one of the most polluted in Mexico.
In February 2008 an eight-year-old boy, Miguel Angel Lopez Rocha, died after he fell into the river. Rocha fell near the El Salto Falls. He died nineteen days later. His autopsy indicated heavy metal poison was the reason for his death. This brought attention to the severe contamination of the river. After this unfortunate incident the local community organized a group called "Un Salto de Vida" ("A Leap for Life"), which sponsored the second National Assembly on Environmental Impacts held in El Salto in May 2009.[Gómez-Balandra, María Antonieta, Edmundo Díaz-Pardo, and Altagracia Gutiérrez-Hernández. "Composición De La Comunidad íctica De La Cuenca Del Río Santiago, México, Durante Su Desarrollo Hidráulico Fish Community Composition of the Santiago River Basin, Mexico, During Its Hydraulic Development." Hidrobiológica, 22.1 (2012): 62–68.]
See also
* List of longest rivers of Mexico
References
External links
Water Resources Atlas
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rio Grande De Santiago
Rivers of Jalisco
Rivers of Nayarit