Danube Delta: A lost paradise

The Danube, 2858 km long and 817 000 km2 basin area (8% of Europe's area), is among Terra's rivers, on the fifteenth position lengthwise and on the seventeenth position in basin area. The name of the river comes from the Latin Danubius, but in antiquity Istros or Ister were constantly used as well. It spring's from the Black Forest mountains and flows back into the Black Sea (a mere coincidence?), after it runs across Europe from north-west to south-east, making a natural passage that has been employed as a main channel of communication in the course of time. The navigable length is at present 2575 km, most of this route being accessible only to fluvial ships. The building of the Danube-Mien Channel, between Rosenberg and Bamberg on a surface of 204 km long, carried on with the Rhine, has inaugurated a new Transeuropean artery of fluvial transport that ties the Black Sea to the North Sea. The Danube's flow is almost entirely artificialized by hydrotechnical retrofitting of damming and building of 45 dams together with the forming of as many accumulation lakes; Iron Gates I is the largest lake (Portile de Fier I) (140 km long).