Tunjuelo River

Tunjuelo River Tunjuelito River
Location of the Tunjuelo River in Colombia
Etymology	Muysccubun: "cerro de los tunjos"
Native name	Río Tunjuelo (Spanish) Río Tunjuelito (Spanish)
Location
Country	Colombia
Department	Cundinamarca
Municipalities	Bogotá
Localities	Sumapaz Usme Ciudad Bolívar Tunjuelito Fontibón
Physical characteristics
Source	Sumapaz Páramo
• coordinates	4°18′25″N 74°07′50″W / 4.3070°N 74.1306°W / 4.3070; -74.1306
Mouth	Bogotá River
• coordinates	4°37′45″N 74°13′21″W / 4.6291°N 74.2225°W / 4.6291; -74.2225
Length	73 km (45 mi)
Basin features
River system	Bogotá River  Magdalena Basin   Caribbean Sea

The Tunjuelo or Tunjuelito River is a river on the Bogotá savanna and a left tributary of the Bogotá River. The river, with a length of 73 kilometres (45 mi) originates in the Sumapaz Páramo and flows northward through the Usme Synclinal to enter the Colombian capital Bogotá. There, the river is mostly canalised flowing westward into the Bogotá River. It is one of the three main rivers of the city, together with the Fucha and Juan Amarillo Rivers.

The names Tunjuelo and Tunjuelito ("little Tunjuelo") are derived from the Cerro de los Tunjos, also Los Tunjos Lake, named after the tunjos, the religious votive figurines of the indigenous language of the Muisca, who inhabited the Bogotá savanna before the Spanish conquest.^[1]

source

mouth

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Source and mouth of the Tunjuelo River on the Bogotá savanna

The Tunjuelo River has a total length of 73 kilometres (45 mi) and originates in the Sumapaz Páramo, in the southern part of Bogotá.^[2] It flows through the southern part of the Colombian capital, south of the Fucha River, and has the largest drainage basin of the rivers of Bogotá.^[3] The river flows through the Usme Synclinal, where the type localities of various geological formations (among others the Marichuela Formation) are situated. The Tunjuelo River forms the border between the localities Usme and Ciudad Bolivar and between the namesake locality Tunjuelito and Ciudad Bolívar. The Tunjuelo River is highly contaminated.^[4]

The Tunjuelo River valley hosts the type localities of various geologic formations of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense.

mouth

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Wetlands in the Tunjuelo River basin

Three of the fifteen protected wetlands of Bogotá are located in the Tunjuelo River basin.

• 
  Tunjuelo River in Ciudad Bolívar
• 
  Tunjuelo River
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  Tunjuelo River
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  Tunjuelo River in Tunjuelito
• 
  Canalised part of the river

• List of rivers of Colombia
• Eastern Hills, Bogotá
• Bogotá savanna, Sumapaz Páramo
• Fucha River, Juan Amarillo River

• Montoya Arenas, Diana María; Reyes Torres, Germán Alfonso (2005), Geología de la Sabana de Bogotá, INGEOMINAS, pp. 1–104
• Osorio Osorio, Julián Antonio (2007), El río Tunjuelo en la historia de Bogotá, 1900-1990 (PDF), Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá, pp. 1–116, retrieved 2017-02-28

• Bayona, Germán; Montenegro, Omar; Cardona, Agustín; Jaramillo, Carlos; Lamus, Felipe; Morón, Sara; Quiroz, Luiz; Ruíz, María C.; Valencia and Mauricio Parra, Victor (2010), "Estratigrafía, procedencia, subsidencia y exhumación de las unidades paleógenas en el Sinclinal de Usme, sur de la zona axial de la Cordillera Oriental - Stratigraphy, provenance, subsidence and exhumation of the Paleogene succession in the Usme Syncline, southern axial zone of the Eastern Cordillera" (PDF), Geología Colombiana, 35: 5–35, retrieved 2017-03-16
• Guerrero Uscátegui, Alberto Lobo (1992), Geología e Hidrogeología de Santafé de Bogotá y su Sabana, Sociedad Colombiana de Ingenieros, pp. 1–20

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Río Tunjuelito.

• (in Spanish) Sistema Hídrico, Bogotá