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Lena River
Lena watershed
Origin	Baikal Mountains
Mouth	Laptev Sea
Basin countries	Russia
Length	4,400 km (2,734 mi)
Source elevation	1,640 m (5,381 ft)
Avg. discharge	17,000 m³/s (600,440 ft³/s)
Basin area	2,500,000 km² (965,250 mi²)

The Lena (Russian: Ле́на) in Siberia is the 10th longest river in the world and has the seventh largest watershed. Rising at the height of 1640 m at its source in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau, 7 km west of Lake Baikal, the Lena flows northeast, being joined by the Kirenga River and the Vitim River. From Yakutsk it enters the lowlands, joined by the Olyokma River and flows north until joined by its right-hand affluent the Aldan River. The Verkhoyansk Range deflects it to the north-west; then, after receiving its most important left-hand tributary, the Vilyuy River, it makes its way nearly due north to the Laptev Sea, a division of the Arctic Ocean, emptying south-west of the New Siberian Islands by a delta 10,800 km² in area, and traversed by seven principal branches, the most important being Bykov, farthest east.

At the mouth of the Lena River is a delta that is about 400 km (250 miles) wide. The delta is frozen tundra for about 7 months of the year, but in May transforms the region into a lush wetland for the next few months. Part of the area is protected as part of the Lena Delta Wildlife Reserve.

The total length of the river is estimated at 4,400 km (2,800 m.). The area of the Lena river basin is calculated at 2,490,000 km². Gold is washed out of the sands of the Vitim and the Olyokma, and mammoth tusks have been dug out of the delta. The Lena has the unusual distinction of appearing to be the longest river in the world when viewed on a map using a Mercator projection, the most common method of displaying the spherical earth on a flat surface, due to that projection's tendency to exaggerate the size of areas near the poles (the Amazon and Nile both cross the equator.)

The majority of researchers believe that the name of the river Lena has been acquired from the original Even-Evenk name Elyu-Ene, which means "the Large River".

Baron Eduard Von Toll, accompanied by Alexander von Bunge, carried out an expedition to the Lena delta area and the islands of New Siberia on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1885. They explored the Lena delta with its multitude of arms that flow towards the Polar sea. Then In spring 1886 they investigated the New Siberian Islands and the Yana River and its tributaries. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov is believed to have taken his alias, Lenin, from the river Lena. It has been suggested that this was done after the events leading to the Lena Goldfields Massacre of workers by the tsarist Russian Army in April of 1912, although the adoption of his pseudonym predates this event. Another suggestion is that the adoption comes about as a result of a personal feud with Georgi Plekhanov, who called himself Volgin after the Volga river. The Lena is much stronger than and flows in the opposite direction as the Volga, thus it was be an obvious choice; Ulyanov, however, had no disagreement with Plekhanov when he first began to use the name.

Lena river Delta by Landsat 2000

• Alexander von Bunge & Baron Eduard Von Toll, The Expedition to the New Siberian Islands and the Yana country, equipped by the Imperial Academy of Sciences. 1887.

• NASA Earth Observatory page on flooding on the Lena River
• Information and a map of the Lena's watershed
• Student Partners Project - scientific study involving students along the Lena River
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.