Download Flooding on the Yangtze River, China

Flooding on the Yangtze River, China
The Yangtze River in China is the world’s third longest river and is
the longest river in Asia. Flooding on the Yangtze has happened
often and occurs due to heavy rainfall in monsoon season,
snowmelt and human factors. Flooding in China accounts for 70%
of economic losses and many people are moved or evacuated in
serious flood conditions. Flooding is a big problem for china as it
becomes more developed.
This map shows the course of the
Yangtze River through China.
(httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiFileYan
gtze_River_Map.png)
The Yangtze is also known as Chang Jiang and its basin takes up
to one fifth of the Chinese landmass. The river stretches from it
source in Qinghai province, 6300km to its mouth around shanghai.
The approximate area the river drains is over 1.81 million km sq
and all this contributes to a discharge of 31, 900 m (3)/s.
The river is a highway through China and can transport goods of
all kinds in boats and ships up its course. With the creation of the
‘Three Gorges dam’ ships and other watercraft can now travel
further up the river due to the increasing of the depth behind the
dam of the river and the new lock system that came with the dam.
Boats passing through
Shanghai along the Yangtze
(httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiFile
Yangtze-Ships.JPG)
The last major flood was in 1998 when 3700 people died and
15million people were made homeless. The total economic losses
from this flood were in the region of US$26 billion. As well as
damage to industry, where factories were flooded leading to loss of
goods in production and machinery, 25 million hectares of land
used for agriculture was flooded. Previous flooding in 1938 was
made worse by the fact that the military had damaged or destroyed
protective levees and the total deaths came to around 1 million
people.
The area most prone to flooding is inhabited by around 50% of the
Chinese population and in this area the gross industrial and
agricultural product is roughly 66% of the Chinese national total.
The economic losses due to flooding come to around 3-5% of
China’s GDP that was lost.
The Chinese government has a complex approach to flood
management as the population is so large and there are many
major rivers which pose flood threats. The lower reaches of china’s
seven major rivers are densely inhabited and land reclamation in
these lower regions has led to a loss of flood plain areas and
stores of flood waters as well as losses of land which could be
used fir extensive flood protection. This land could be rereleased
back off of the inhabitants and used for flood protection, much like
how the mass movement of people was handled when the gorges
behind the ‘Three Gorges Dam’ were flooded.
China’s overall flood plan is made up of the following:
1) Storage (of floodwater) in upriver sections as much as
possible.
2) In the mid-course and downriver areas flood prone areas are
protected against normal flooding of the major rivers
3) Use of levees and storage basins for handling extraordinary
flooding
4) Preparation for floods and fighting floods before and during
the flood season and relying on a well organized emergency
management system.
The government has tried to come up with a series of flood
control systems which comprise of around 85,000 reservoirs
that were constructed in the upriver regions and they are used
in conjunction with irrigation and hydroelectric power
generation. Part of the system is the extensive length of levees
that have been created. The total length of the system of levees
is around 250,000km in the middle and lower river courses and
they protect 34 million hectares of land for agriculture and
around 400 million people. In extraordinary events there are
lakes and low valleys that regulate the
excessive volume of water. There are
around 100 of these together on the major
rivers. China also has a large number of
pumping stations which are essentially
integral to the flood protection efforts and
they have had an important role in alleviation
of flood disasters in areas which would not
naturally be able to drain themselves in the
Pumping Station relieving excess
flood season. These pumping stations are
flood waters
also used to pump water for irrigation in the
dry periods.
Although the Chinese
government has contingency
and mitigation plans for
flooding this is only useful
when flooding is imminent or
occurring and even then the
prevention of large scale
effects is low as land is often
Chinese military reinforcing flood
lost, the recent flood and
protection
earthquake disturbances in
2008 showed that the Chinese government still had in
capabilities and was unwilling to submit to complete salvation of
the problem. With flooding still a huge threat to many of those
living in the lower regions of the Yangtze and other major rivers,
China still needs a future plan of action whether it be increasing
flood defences or prevention of extraordinary floods occurring
and that when they do they can be managed by the current
infrastructure. How could these problems be addressed and in
what ways could they be solved? Is the Chinese government
still too unwilling to aid the people that inhabit the country it
runs?