Река Майенна: История и современное состояние

River in western France

The Mayenne (majɛn) is a long river in western France, principally located in the French region of Pays de la Loire. Together with the river Sarthe and its tributary the Loir it forms the Maine, which is a tributary to the Loire.

The Mayenne was navigable in its natural state up to Château Gontier. Works were undertaken in the 16th century to make the river navigable upstream from here to Laval; royal decrees by François I in 1536 and 1537 authorised the necessary works, including flash locks. Economic expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries justified engineering with locks and weirs not only to Laval but also upstream to Mayenne. This extension, with 20 locks and weirs, was built at the same time as about 40 flash locks were replaced by 25 weirs and locks, some in short lock cuts, between 1853 et 1878. The river was used by barges carrying up to 130 tonnes, and the principal traffics were construction materials (wood and stone), coal from the mines of L'Huisserie, grain, fruit and vegetables. At this time it was planned to build a watershed canal north from Mayenne to the tidal river Orne at Caen, but the project was abandoned as railways became the preferred carrier of freight. The navigation was abandoned after World War II, but restored from the 1970s as a cruising waterway. The upstream section was completed in the early 1990s.

In spite of abundant precipitation, the flow of the Mayenne is irregular because of the impermeability of the sandstone, granite, and schist which form its drainage basin. Thus, for an average flow of before the Mayenne's confluence with the Oudon, the yearly minimum flow can range from very low ( at Laval) to very high (flash floods with flows of at Laval and more than at Chambellay). The flow of the Mayenne has been observed for a period of 44 years (1965 2008) at Chambellay, situated upstream of the confluence with the Sarthe, and just upstream from where the Oudon joins the Mayenne. At this location, the drainage basin of the river is out of a total of , which is less than three quarters of the entire drainage basin (71.5%), and also does not include the flow of the Oudon, the Mayenne's principal tributary. The average yearly flow at Chambellay is , which corresponds to over if the rest of the drainage basin were included.