Three Gorges Reservoir

The Three Gorges Reservoir is the reservoir impounded by the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Yiling District, Hubei Province, China, which began filling in 2003 and reached its designed maximum water level of 175 meters above sea level by 2010. At full capacity it stretches as much as 600 kilometers long, averages about 1.12 kilometers wide, covers a surface area of roughly 1,084 square kilometers and holds about 39.3 cubic kilometers of water. Filling the reservoir flooded a total of about 632 square kilometers of land, and the reservoir now serves flood control, water storage for downstream agriculture and industry, and the hydroelectric generation of the dam that impounds it.