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Yellow River's Flooding History
Flooding is the most common hydrological hazard occurring in various regions of the world. For instance, statistics have recorded 3000 such disasters since the beginning of the 20th century. This is attributed to the widespread distribution of rivers, floodplains, and low-lying coastal plains that are extremely attractive for human settlement. Occurrence of this hazard claims approximately twenty thousand lives each year: at least twenty million are displaced across the globe from their homes at the same time. In addition to devastating impacts on humanity, floods are also known to impact negatively on the economy especially for those countries that have invested heavily on disaster management technology (Keith 232). This study focuses on the flooding history of the lower Yellow River, which is a key water body that has served Chinese civilization for ages. The main factors considered are the driving forces of flood frequency, the implication of flooding on the Chinese society throughout its imperial period, and the manner in which human factors have contributed to the frequency of flooding events in the later imperial period.
It is clear from the article that flooding occurs due to the super-elevation of the river belt caused by sediment accumulation in the channel and the increment in the water supply. In the and grazing. As the climate changed, most of the Chinese nomadic people relocated to this region to enjoy the benefits of the river. The migration and relocation caused the area under farmland to be expansive. Because of the intensive farming, soil erosion and sedimentation rate in the lower channel increased substantially thus raising the riverbed. In fact, this river has been previously described to be having sixty-percent silt (Chen 684).
Historically, the establishment of dynasties that settled in the region who converted to both settlement and farming scheme characterized the banks of the Yellow River. The massive felling trees for firewood and construction of palaces led to considerable deforestation. The Sanyangzhuang settlement site on the North China…
Work Cited
Chen, Yunzhen et al. Socio-economic Impacts on Flooding: A 4000-Year History of the Yellow
River, China. Beijing: Springer. 2012. Print.
Keith, Smith, and Petley, David. Environmental Hazards; Assessing Risks and Reducing
Disaster. New York, NY: Routledge. Print.
Another consequence of the exploitative use of water resources is the destruction of mangrove forests and the fragmentation of the habitats of endangered species. The United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna listed 189 endangered species in China among the 740 in the world. Sand content is quite high in the Yellow River. In the dry season, sand rises and flies up with the
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