Elbe river
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The Elbe River basin is shared mainly between the Czech Republic upstream,
which has approximately a third, and Germany downstream, which has the
remainder. Large parts of the Elbe river basin have characteristics of a lowland
river with a wide alluvial valley downstream of Dresden. More than a half of the
river basin is located at altitudes lower than 200 m alt., mainly forming the
Northern German Plain, almost 33% of the catchment has altitudes between 200
and 500 m alt., representing the hilly land, and almost 17% of the drainage area
belongs to the low mountain ranges, of which only 2% is located at altitudes of
more than 800 m above sea level 1. The average annual precipitation level of the
complete Elbe River basin is 628 mm. Compared with the Rhine, Danube, Weser,
and Ems basins, the Elbe is the driest of the drainage basins in Germany. However,
the map shows significant differences in the individual regions 1. The discharge
regime of the Elbe river usually shows high water levels in winter and spring, and
low water levels in summer and autumn. The average discharge of the Elbe river is
861 m3·s−1 1.