Related terms

Distributaries in other countries
In Louisiana, the Atchafalaya River is an important distributary of the Mississippi River. Because the Atchafalaya takes a steeper route to the Gulf of Mexico than the main channel, it has captured more and more of the Mississippi's flow over several decades, including capturing the Red River, which was formerly a tributary of the Mississippi. The Old River Control Structure, a dam which regulates the outflow from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya, was completed in 1963 to prevent the Atchafalaya from capturing the main flow of the Mississippi and stranding the ports of Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
An example of inland distributaries is the Teton River, a tributary of Henrys Fork in Idaho, which splits into two distributary channels, the North Fork and South Fork, which join Henrys Fork miles apart.

North America
The Casiquiare is a distributary of the upper Orinoco, which flows southward into the Rio Negro and forms a unique natural canal between the Orinoco and Amazon river systems. It is the largest river on the planet that links two major river systems.

South America

The IJssel, the Waal and the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine) are the three principal distributaries of the Rhine.
The Akhtuba River is a major distributary of the Volga.
The Tärendö River in northern Sweden is a real distributary, far from the mouth of the river. It begins at the Torne River and ends at the Kalix River. Asia
See History of the Nile Delta.

The Nile River has two distributaries, the Rosetta and the Damietta branches. According to Pliny the Elder it had in ancient times seven distributaries (east to west):

• The Pelusiac
  The Tanitic
  The Mendesian
  The Phatnitic
  The Sebennytic
  The Bolbitine
  The Canopic
  The Okavango River ends in many distributaries in a large inland delta called the Okavango Delta. It is an example of distributaries that do not flow into any other body of water.