The Bug (Polish: Bug [buk] (listen)) or Western Bug (Ukrainian: Західний Буг, Zakhidnyy Buh, Belarusian: Захо́дні Буг, Zakhodni Buh; Russian: Западный Буг, Zapadnyy Bug) is a major river mostly located in Eastern Europe that flows through Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine with a total length of 774 kilometres (481 mi).[1]

Bug Polish: Bug Ukrainian: Західний Буг Belarusian: Захо́дні Буг Russian: Западный Буг
Bug River in the vicinity of Wyszków, Poland
Bug River through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland
Location
Country	Poland, Belarus, Ukraine
Voivodeship Voblast Oblast	Podlaskie, Mazovian, Lublin, Brest, Lviv
Physical characteristics
Source
• location	near Verkhobuzh, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine
• coordinates	49°52′0.5736″N 25°5′48.609″E
• elevation	310 m (1,020 ft)
Mouth	Narew
• location	near Serock, Poland
• coordinates	52°30′29.286″N 21°5′2.688″E
• elevation	75 m (246 ft)
Length	774 km (481 mi)
Basin size	38,712 km2 (14,947 sq mi)
Discharge
• location	Serock
• average	1 m3/s (35 cu ft/s)
Discharge
• location	mouth
• average	155 m3/s (5,500 cu ft/s)
Basin features
Progression	Narew→ Vistula→ Baltic Sea

A tributary of the Narew, the Bug forms part of the Belarus–Poland border and part of the Poland–Ukraine border border between Ukraine and Poland for 185 kilometres (115 mi),[2] and between Belarus and Poland for 178 kilometres (111 mi),[2][3] and is the fourth longest Polish rivers.

History

According to Zbigniew Gołąb, the Slavic hydronym Bug as *bugъ/*buga derives from Indo-European verbal root *bheug- (having cognates in old Germanic word *bheugh- etc. with meaning of "bend, turn, moves away"), with hypothetical original meaning of "pertaining to a (river) bend", and derivatives in Russian búga ("low banks of a river, overgrown with bushes"), Polish bugaj ("bushes or woods in a river valley or on a steep river bank"), Latvian bauga ("marshy place by a river").[4]

Traditionally, e.g. by the drafters of the Curzon Line, the Bug River has been considered to be the ethnographical border between the East and West as well as the border between Polish Orthodox and Catholic peoples.[5] ^{[verification needed]}

The Bug was part of the frontier between the slices of Poland occupied by Austria and Russia after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, the southern half of the eastern border of the Duchy of Warsaw (1809-1815), Congress Poland (1815-1867), of the Vistula Land (1867-1913), and of the Regency Kingdom of Poland (1917-1918). The Bug also formed part of the dividing line between German Wehrmacht and Soviet Red Army zones specified in a secret clause of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty of 28 September 1939 following the September 1939 invasion of Poland in the Second World War.

Geographic characteristics

The Bug is a left tributary of the Narew. It flows from the Lviv Oblast in the west of Ukraine northwards into the Volyn Oblast, before passing along the Ukraine-Polish and Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, where it follows part of the border between the Masovian and Podlaskie Voivodeships. It joins the Narew at Serock, a few kilometers upstream of the artificial Zegrze Lake.[2]

This part of the Narew between the confluence and the Vistula is sometimes referred to as Bugo-Narew but on December 27, 1962, the Prime Minister of Poland's act abolished the name "Bugo-Narew", soon after Zegrze Lake was completed.[6]

On the Bug, a few kilometers from the Vysokaye in Kamenets District of the Brest Region, is the westernmost point of Belarus.[7] It is also connected with the Dnieper via the Mukhavets, a right-bank tributary, by the Dnieper-Bug Canal.

Basin

The total basin area of Bug is 38,712 square kilometres (14,947 sq mi) of which half, 19,239 square kilometres (7,428 sq mi) or, 50%, is in Poland.[1] Somewhat more than a quarter, 11,400 square kilometres (4,400 sq mi) or 29%, is in Belarus, and a bit under a quarter, 8,700 square kilometres (3,400 sq mi) or 22% lies in Ukraine.[2]

The climate of the Bug basin is temperate.[2]

The basin experiences annual high-water levels during spring flooding due to thawing snow, after which a low flow period starts and lasts until October or mid-November. Occasional summer floods often occur in the headlands, where mountains influence favorable flash-flood conditions. In Autumn the water level increases are inconsiderable; in some years they do not happen at all. During the winter the river can have temporary ice-outs that sometimes provoke ice jams, causing an increase of the level up to 2 metres (6.6 ft). The resultant water levels are changeable due to the instability of ice cover.[2]

Flooding

Significant floods during the last 60 years in Belarus were registered in 1958, 1962, 1967, 1971 and 1974.[2] The largest spring flood was observed in 1979, when the maximum water discharge was 19.1 cubic metres per second on 24 March 1979, at the village of Chersk; 166 cubic metres per second near the village of Tyukhinichi (Lyasnaya river) on 31 March 1979; and 269 cubic metres per second near Brest on 1 April 1979. A similar spring flood occurred in 1999, when the spring run-off in March–May exceeded the average annual value by almost half again (48%).

The last time the Bug flooded in Poland and Ukraine was in 2010 and the last time it flooded in Belarus was in 1999.[2]

Tributaries

Photo gallery

• 
  Bug River in the vicinity of Włodawa
• 
  Bug River in the vicinity of Nur
• 
  Bug River in the vicinity of Drohiczyn
• 
  Bug River landscape near Nadbużański
• 
  Bug River in the vicinity of Małkinia Górna
• 
  Bug River in the vicinity of Serpelice

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bug River.

• Bug Landscape Park
• Geography of Belarus – Overview of the geography of Belarus
• Geography of Poland – Geographical features of Poland
• Geography of Ukraine – Geography of the country of Ukraine
• Rivers of Belarus
• Rivers of Poland
• Rivers of Ukraine
• Southern Bug – River in Ukraine

References

External links

• (in Polish) Bug in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (1880)

На других языках

[de] Bug (Fluss)

[es] Bug Occidental

[it] Bug Occidentale

[ru] Западный Буг