With reference to one or more located examples, examine the way in which river basins can be a multi-use resource
River basins can be a multi-use resource for example the river Thames in the United Kingdom is 13,000 km2 long and runs through Oxford, London and Reading. The river basin is home to 12 million people and so; there are lots of different activities that take place every day along the river: Industry, oil refining is a big industry along the river along with the production of paper and cement along the estuary. Furthermore, the river provides services such as; recreation, tourism and leisure. Tourism on the Thames consists of boat trips to see the city and all it has to offer and there are also tour boats/buses to see other parts of London. Moreover, some of the main recreational activities are rowing and sailing, which are the more common ones, although kayaking and canoeing also take place. Another possible recreational activity is swimming in the Thames, although it is rare because it is very dirty water and normally too cold for most people to swim in, some people do as there are some safe headwaters for organised swimming and non-Olympic water sports such as: “skiffing” and “punting”. The Thames is very built up with settlement as it flows through the capital of England, which has increasing been developed since the industrial revolution. Along the estuary and its tributaries farmers are able to use the arable land to farm irrigation methods to grow their crops.
However, not all rivers are in MEDCs and some places where the rivers are a lot bigger cannot sustain the river discharge efficiently which cause the floodplains to flood where there is civilisation and homes. The Mekong river is in an LEDC with a total area of 800,000 km2 and a population of 55 million people spread across six countries (China’s Yunnan Province, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam). The river has seasonal flow because it is on a delta and it is also the 12th longest river in the world and the 7th largest in Asia and one of the largest drainage basins in the world. Even though the Mekong flows through LEDCs it can be used to generate HEP along its tributaries, mostly China and Vietnam are increasing their dam construction especially China at the Yunnan province which is causing conflicts between the dam owners and the inhabitants
