Lake Evolution during the Last 3000 Years in China and Its Implications for Environmental Change

1993 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin-Qi Fang

AbstractTaking China as a whole, lake expansion occurred 500 B.C. (?)-0 A.D., 650-950 A.D., and 1250-1650 A.D. over the past 3000 yr. The expansions were mainly due to climatic fluctuations and correspond to frequent flood reports. Three regional characteristics of lake development have been recognized. (1) Fluctuations of near-coastal lakes, and those in other regions as well, were out of phase during 500 B.C.-500 A.D., which possibly resulted from out-of-phase fluctuations of climate and sea level on 10- to 100-yr time scale. (2) As the lower Yellow River channel migrated southward, the lakes in the south of the North China Plain formed and reached their largest sizes much later than those in the north. (3) For the lakes in the middle and lower Yangtze River valley, the higher a lake basin lies above a neighboring river and the further the lake is from the river's mouth, in general, the younger the lake is. Through land reclamation, the ancient Chinese have changed most of the lakes greatly. However, human activities were also constrained in certain ways by the natural changes of the lakes. Reclamation usually was banned and farmland was abandoned to repair reservoirs while lakes were expanding.

Author(s):  
David A. Pietz

Flowing through the North China Plain, one of China’s major agricultural regions, the Yellow River has long represented a challenge to Chinese governments to manage. Preventing floods has been an overriding concern for these states in order to maintain a semblance of ecological equilibrium on the North China Plain. This region’s environment is heavily influenced by seasonal fluctuations in precipitation, leading to a long history of famine, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when water management structures disintegrated with the deterioration of the imperial system. In the 20th century, new civil and hydraulic engineering techniques and technologies held the promise for enhanced management of the region’s waterways. After 1949, the new government of the People’s Republic used a hybrid approach consisting of the tenets of multipurpose water management combined with the tools of mass mobilization that were hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party. The wide-ranging exploitation of surface and groundwater resources during the Maoist period left a long shadow for the post-Mao period that witnessed rapid consumption of water to fuel agricultural, industrial, and urban reforms. The challenge for the contemporary state in China is creating a system of water allocation through increased supply and demand management that can sustain the economic and social transformations of the era.


2020 ◽  
Vol 546 ◽  
pp. 109691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guoqiao Xiao ◽  
Yuqi Sun ◽  
Jilong Yang ◽  
Qiuzhen Yin ◽  
Guillaume Dupont-Nivet ◽  
...  

The Holocene ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1759-1770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Storozum ◽  
Qin Zhen ◽  
Ren Xiaolin ◽  
Li Haiming ◽  
Cui Yifu ◽  
...  

From AD 1048 to 1128, Yellow River flooding killed over a million people, left many more homeless and destitute, and turned parts of the once fertile North China Plain into a silted-up agricultural wasteland. Brought on in part by climate change and the Northern Song dynasty’s (AD 960–1127) mismanagement of the environment, the Yellow River floods likely hastened the collapse of the Northern Song dynasty. Despite the magnitude of this flood event, no sedimentary deposits have yet been linked to these historically recorded floods. In this research paper, we provide archaeological, sedimentary, and radiocarbon evidence of the AD 1048–1128 Yellow River floods at the Dazhanglongcun, Xidacheng, and Daguxiancun sites in Neihuang County, Henan Province. Based on our data, we argue that the AD 1048–1128 Yellow River floods deposited over 5 m of alluvium on villages in the North China Plain, radically changing both the physical and political landscape of Northern Song dynasty China.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Liu ◽  
Weiping Wang ◽  
Shisong Qu ◽  
Yan Zheng ◽  
Wenliang Li

The North China Plain is the main grain production district in China, with a large area of well irrigation resulting in a large groundwater depression cone. In the 1970s and 1980s, small-scale managed aquifer recharge (MAR) projects were developed to recharge shallow groundwater, which played an important role in ensuring stable and high crop yields. MAR projects are divided into 10 types based on local water conservancy characteristics. The combined use of well–canal irrigation has been widespread in the Yellow River Irrigation District of Shandong Province for nearly 40 years, where canals play multiple roles of transporting and storing Yellow River water or local surface water, recharging groundwater and providing canal irrigation. Moreover, the newly developed open channel–underground perforated pipe–shaft–water saving irrigation system can further expand the scope and amount of groundwater recharge and prevent system clogging through three measures. Finally, an adaptability zoning evaluation system of water spreading has been established in Liaocheng City of Shandong Province based on the following five factors: groundwater depth, thickness of fine sand, specific yield, irrigation return flow, and groundwater extraction intensity. The results show that MAR is more adaptable to the western region than to the eastern and central regions.


Author(s):  
Min Xue ◽  
Jianzhong Ma ◽  
Guiqian Tang ◽  
Shengrui Tong ◽  
Bo Hu ◽  
...  

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