Južna Morava

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Južna Morava or South Morava (Serbian: Јужна Морава) is a river in Serbia which represents the shorter headwater of Velika Morava. Today, it's 295 km long, flowing generally in the south to north direction, from Macedonian border to central Serbia, where it meets Zapadna Morava (Serbian: Западна Морава) at Stalać, to create Velika Morava.

Contents

1 Source
2 Geography
3 Tributaries
4 Economy
5 See also
6 References

Source

It begins in the mountain of Skopska Crna Gora, in Republic of Macedonia, north of its capital Skopje. Streams of Ključevska reka and Slatinska reka join to form river Golema, which is, after passing the Macedonian-Serbian border, known as Binčaka Morava. After 49 km it meets Preševska Moravica at Bujanovac, and for the remaining of 246 km flows as Južna Morava.

Geography

River belongs to the Black Sea drainage basin, and its own drainage area is 15.469 km², out of which 1.237 is in Bulgaria (through its right tributary Nišava). It's average discharge at the mouth is 100 m³/sec and its not navigable.

Južna Morava has a composite valley, which means it consists of series of gorges and depressions in this order: Gnjilane depression-Končulj gorge-Vranje depression-Grdelica gorge-Leskovac depression-Niš depression-Aleksinac depression-Stalać gorge. After breaking through the last, Stalać gorge, it meets Zapadna Morava.

In macro-geological point of view, Južna Morava connects Aegean basin with Pannonian basin. This creates a phenomenon named apparent flow inversion, because it seems that river from one lowland climbs up the mountains and then flows into another lowland. The point connecting these two large geological basins is Grdelica gorge (Serbian: Grdelička klisura/Грделичка клисура), but the bottom of the gorge, where river flows, is much lower than the mountains surrounding it, so river flows normally.

Južna Morava used to be 318 km long and represented longer and natural (flowing in the same direction) headwater of Velika Morava. Causing severe floods in history, meandering river has been shortened by almost 30 km until today, so it became shorter than Zapadna Morava. However, Zapadna Morava always had bigger discharge.

Areas in southern Serbia where Južna Morava flows have been almost completely deforested which causes one of the most severe cases of excessive erosion in the Balkans. As a result of this, river brings large amount of materials to Velika Morava, filling and elevating its river bed, which helps the huge floods of its daughter river.

Tributaries

Južna Morava has 157 tributaries. Most important left ones are: Jablanica, Veternica, Pusta reka and Toplica. Right tributaries are: Vrla, Vlasina, Nišava (the longest) and Sokobanjska Moravica.

Economy

It has significant potential for electricity production, but this has not been used at all. Huge hydroelectrical system has been constructed in it's drainage basin, though (Vlasina- Vrla I-IV power stations).

To a certain extent, its waters are used for irrigation.

The most important role river valley has in transportation. It's the natural route for both railway and highway Belgrade-Skopje-Thessaloniki.

References

Mala Prosvetina Enciklopedija, Third edition (1985); Prosveta; ISBN 86-07-00001-2
Jovan Đ. Marković (1990): "Enciklopedijski geografski leksikon Jugoslavije"; Svjetlost-Sarajevo; ISBN 86-01-02651-6