The Salado River ( es, Río Salado, ) is a river in northern

Buenos Aires Province Buenos Aires (), officially the Buenos Aires Province (''Provincia de Buenos Aires'' ), is the largest and most populous Argentine province. It takes its name from the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country, which used to be part of th ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

. It originates at El Chañar Lake on the boundary with

Santa Fe Province The Province of Santa Fe ( es, Provincia de Santa Fe, ) is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco (divided by the 28th parallel south), Corrientes, Entre R� ...

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

, and flows generally southeast for before debouching into

Samborombón Bay Samborombón Bay () is a bay on the coast of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Located at the Río de la Plata's mouth on the Argentine Sea, it begins about southeast of Buenos Aires and is about wide. Toponymy The bay is thought to have been n ...

, part of the

Río de la Plata The Río de la Plata (, "river of silver"), also called the River Plate or La Plata River in English, is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River at Punta Gorda. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean and fo ...

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

on the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. The Salado's mouth is about south of the city of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

. The Salado's

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

is about , which is over half of the province's area. The region receives an annual average of of precipitation, which often causes

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

ing in the low-lying area. The river flows by the cities of Junín,

Roque Pérez Roque Pérez is a town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the administrative headquarters for Roque Pérez Partido. Notable people * Jorge Dalto Jorge Dalto (July 8, 1948 – October 27, 1987) was a pop, jazz and Afro-Cuban music pia ...

, and General Belgrano, as well as a number of wetlands and lakes; channelization of the lower course has improved the drainage of the river's . Nearly 1 million people live in the basin. Hydrological studies have been performed in the Salado basin, principally in the Azul, Buenos Aires creek basin by the Instituto de Hidrologia de Llanuras de Azul. Ecological studies have been done by the Ecology group of Facultad de Agronomía de la UNICEN.Facultad de Agronomía—UNICEN
/ref> In the 19th century, before the

Conquest of the Desert The Conquest of the Desert ( es, Conquista del desierto) was an Argentine military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s with the intention of establishing dominance over the Patagonian Desert, inhabited primar ...

, the Salado River served as frontier boundary between the Spanish colonised lands and those still under control of the

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

. Because Argentina has another, more important Salado River, in the northern part of the country, this Salado River is sometimes called Salado del Sur ("Southern Salado").

References

Rivers of Buenos Aires Province La Plata basin Rivers of Argentina {{Argentina-river-stub

See also

References