Mereb River

The Mereb River, also known as the Gash River, is a river flowing out of central Eritrea. Its chief importance is defining part of the boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia, between the point where the Mai Ambassa enters the river at to the confluence of the Balasa with the Mereb at.

Course

According to the Statistical Abstract of Ethiopia for 1967/68, the Mereb River is long. The Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resources reports its Ethiopian catchment area as, with an annual runoff of 0.26 billion cubic meters. Other sources talking about a catchment of to over all, and a discharge of in average over the year, and in peaks. Its headwaters rise south-west of Asmara in central Eritrea. It flows south, bordering Ethiopia, then west through western Eritrea to reach the Sudanese plains near Kassala. Unlike the Setit or Takazze rivers, which flow out of Ethiopia and also forms a natural border with Eritrea, the waters of the Mereb do not usually reach the Nile but dissipate in the sands of the eastern Sudanese plains, forming an inland delta.
The Mereb is dry for much of the year, but like the Takazze is subject to sudden floods during the rainy season; only the left bank of the upper course of the Mereb is in Ethiopian territory. Its main tributaries are the Obel River on the right bank and the Sarana, Balasa, Mai Shawesh, and 'Engweya Rivers on the left.

History

The Mereb was important historically as the boundary between two separately governed regions in the area: the land of the Bahr negash to the north of the river, and the Tigray to the south. The territories under the Bahr negash extended as far north as the Red Sea coast, and as far south as Shire and the capital was at Debarwa in modern Eritrea, about south of Asmara.

Wildlife

The river's Eritrean floodplain was the location of a 2001 sighting of a sizable elephant herd, the first such sighting in Eritrea since 1955.