Rivers and Lakes

Danube
Photo: BML / Alexander Haiden

How many rivers and lakes are there in Austria?

There are 2,194 running waters in Austria whose catchment area is larger than 10 km².

53 Austrian rivers have a catchment area of more than 500 km².

Those 30 bodies of water which have a catchment area of more than 1,000 km² record a total length of about 3,800 km.

In total the Austrian network of running waters is more than 100,000 km long. The medium density of the network of waters amounts to 1.2 km/km².

There are more than 25,000 stagnant water bodies with a size exceeding 250 . This includes big lakes which have developed naturally, pools, small bodies of water, and water bodies in the wetlands as well as artificially developed quarry ponds, ponds, storage lakes and reservoirs.

There are about 2,140 stagnant waters, whose area exceeds 1 ha. The total area of these waters amounts to about 613 km² which corresponds to about 0.7 % of the federal territory.
62 lakes are “big lakes” with an area of more than 50 ha.  43 of them are natural, 19 artificial lakes. In addition there are also some storage lakes for energy generation which are larger than 50 ha.