Yellow River

Category: Inland Aquatic Biomes.

Geographic Location: Asia.

Summary: This long river, dubbed Mother of China, has suffered extreme erosion, pollution, and riverbed degradation, but new approaches may help turn around its decline.

As the second-longest river in China after the Yangtze, and the sixth-longest in the world, the Yellow River, or Huang He, has attracted attention throughout history. Traditionally speaking, it is believed to be where Chinese civilization originated about four thousand years ago. The huge drainage area of the river has nurtured thousands of generations and millions of people. Based on 2006 statistics, 107 million people had settled in the Yellow River basin, which was about 8.6 percent of the population in China then. Water from the Yellow River fosters an even greater number of people—140 million, which was 10 percent of the population in that year. Thus, the Yellow River is called Cradle of the Chinese People or Mother of China.

However, though it is the pride of the Chinese people, it also their sorrow. Flooding and droughts in the Yellow River basin have taken uncountable lives and caused unspeakable suffering to the people and the country. In recent years, pollution from domestic sewage, industrial wastewater, and other sources add additional layers of difficulty in managing the river. Progress has been made in preventing natural disasters and improving water quality, but there is still a long way to go to fully control the river and eliminate the problems that it has brought to the Chinese people.

Course and Character

The source water of the Yellow River has been a mystery and contentious issue for many years. Until recently, the twin lakes of Gyaring and Ngoring on the Tibetan plateau were thought to be the source of water for the river. Recently, Chinese scientists, irrigation experts, and flood control specialists traveled beyond the twin lakes and identified the true source of the river as a stream that seeps out of a gentle slope on the northern flank of the 17,854-foot-high (5,442-meter) mountain Yagradagze Shan.

The bubbling and crystal-clear water supplied by glaciers and underground springs eventually flows into the Bohai Gulf, joining the Yellow Sea northwest of the waters of the East China Sea. On the way to the gulf, a total distance of 3,395 miles (5,464 kilometers), the Yellow River wanders through the northern semiarid region, crosses the loess plateau (loess is the type of ochre-yellow calcareous rock that is found there), and passes through the eastern plain. Altogether, the twisting journey from the origin to the sea passes through nine provinces and autonomous regions. It passes over Qinghai, skirts Sichuan, cuts across Gansu, flows through the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia, forms the border between Shananxi and Shanxi, winds through Henan and Shandong, and enters the Gulf of Bohai.

Generally, it takes one month for water from the spring on Yagradagze Shan to reach the gulf. Along the way, it accumulates water from 286,659 square miles (742,443 square kilometers) of drainage area. This is 8.3 percent of the total area of China and is as big as Italy, Germany, and Great Britain combined. The river’s course, if sketched roughly on a map, shows an outline of an angry and arch-backed dragon. Ironically, for many years, people who live in the Yellow River basin have believed that the river is occupied by a dragon—a fearsome, powerful, and unpredictable beast.

The Yellow River can be divided into three segments: the upper reach, which is between Qinghai Province and Hekouzhen in Inner Mongolia; the middle reach, which ends at Taohuayu in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province; and the lower reach, which ends in a delta on the Bohai Sea. The upper reach of the Yellow River, where the province of Qinghai is located, remains desolate, unpopulated, and remote. At this birthplace of the Yellow River, nature flourishes. This corner of the plateau is a paradise for animals and birds. Hares, rabbits, and marmots are common. Rare white-mouthed deer and elegant black-neck cranes are unique to this place.

Sediment Load

At the middle reach, the Yellow River cuts the loess plateau in half like the blade of a sword, forming the longest continuous gorge in the whole drainage area of the river. The plateau, an area of about 247,105 square miles (640,000 square kilometers), is covered with a thick loess layer several hundred feet (meters) deep. During summer seasons, rain storms rip massive quantities of soil into the Yellow River. It is estimated that up to 11,023 tons (10,000 metric tons) of loess soil is washed away from each 0.4 square mile (1 square kilometer) of land annually. Like the Nile, which is full of silt, the Yellow River is rich in sediments.

The ochre mud washed down from the plateau gives the river a hue ranging from a golden glow under the sun to a sullen grayish tone under winter snow clouds. In recent decades, it is estimated that an average of 1.6 billion tons of sediment is carried by the Yellow River each year. For every 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) of water from the river, there are 84 pounds (38 kilograms) of sediment. Regarding soil content, the only major river in the world that comes close is the Colorado, with sediment content of 62 pounds (28 kilograms) per 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter).

Of all the sediment in the water, only about 25 percent is emptied into the sea. The remainder is deposited in the riverbed and flood plains. As a consequence, the riverbed has risen 2–4 inches (50–100 millimeters) per year. Sediment deposition has raised flood control embankments and caused great difficulties in managing the river. More than 4,000 years ago, the legendary emperor Yu the Great, famous for his skills in hydraulic engineering, said, “Conquering the Yellow River is equal to controlling the whole of China.”

Dams and Drought

Following Yu the Great, almost every emperor or king in the history of China tried to tame the Yellow River. Chairman Mao was no exception. As a result of his obsession with taming the river, the 350-foot-tall (107-meter-tall) Sanmenxia Dam was constructed in the 1950s. Though it provided electricity to the surrounding population, it forced people to leave homes where their families had settled for many generations. In addition, because of a shocking lack of foresight about how much sediment would end up in the river, the dam caused floods that ruined many lives.

In 2000, the then-largest hydroelectric plant on the Yellow River was superseded by another megastructure in Xiaolangdi. Its reservoir extends over 105 square miles (272 square kilometers). The Chinese government had planned to build more dams by 2030, adding to the twenty major dams already interrupting the Yellow River.

At the lower reach, the Yellow River has lost its grandeur. Laden with sediments, the river looks exhausted and flows sluggishly. The delta area around where the river meets the Bohai Sea has been designated a nature reserve with an area of 378,070 acres (153,000 hectares). The humid climate has attracted more than 268 bird species, along with small mammals such as foxes.

For the lower reach, the problem is drought. Dry-up of the lower reach was observed from 1972 to 2000. The duration of dry periods increased rapidly in the 1990s. The worst year was 1997, when the main river close to the sea dried up for 226 days. The no-flow distance reached 437 miles (704 kilometers) from the river mouth.

This issue is caused by water overuse upstream. Approximately 80 percent of the Yellow River basin area is dry land. To use the land for agricultural purposes, irrigation was started in the basin more than 1,000 years ago. Vast irrigation projects were developed from the 1950s to the 1970s. In a decade after the 1970s, the irrigation areas were widely expanded to the outside of the basin. During the past 50 years, the irrigation area has increased nearly ten times. At the same time, over-irrigation, poor drainage systems, and increased demand have resulted in seri-ous consequences of river dry-up.

Pollution and New Plans

In addition to flooding and drought, the water quality of the Yellow River is a serious concern. Annually, more than 4 billion tons (3.6 billion metric tons) of wastewater, which accounts for 10 percent of the river’s volume, is dumped directly into the Yellow River. The untreated wastewater has led one-third of the river’s native fish species to extinction and made long distances of the river unsuitable even for irrigation. It is estimated that 50 percent of the Yellow River is biologically dead. Toxic water has resulted in increased cases of cancer, birth defects, and waterborne diseases along the riverbanks.

The Chinese government has realized the sacrifice it made over the years to pursue fast economic growth. Many environmental laws, rules, and regulations have been written, but the true problem is that not many rules are put into full effect at the local level. The inability of local environmental protection agencies to prevent direct waste discharge has angered many environmental activists. As a result, they form groups and hold protests. To a certain degree, their involvement does make a difference. However, considering the scope of the problems that are facing the Yellow River, their efforts are still too small to have a huge effect on properly managing the river. Moreover, even if pollution could be controlled, the gap between water demand and water supply would still be too big to fill. This gap would have to be mitigated through different ways to reduce demand, which could be detrimental to economic growth.

In the twenty-first century, the Chinese government has been dedicating significant efforts to better managing the Yellow River. In light of the large drainage areas that are eroded—166,024 square miles (430,000 square kilometers) out of 286,659 square miles (742,443 square kilometers)—solutions have been implemented to reduce deforestation, overgrazing, and overworked hillsides by planting more hardy trees and shrubs and forming more terraces along the loess plateau. For one thing, this will reduce erosion of the plateau. For another, by preventing sediment deposition in the Yellow River, the flooding problems can be cut back due to the slower rise of the riverbed.

The drought issue is even harder to handle. In the future, water resource allocation will be a huge issue because of increasing population, rising living standards, increasing pressure of expanding agricultural areas, developing industries in the basin, and global climate change, which will tend to both cause more drought and precipitate more violent storm and flooding events. This issue may seem to belong to China only. But, in reality, its effect extends beyond this country, with international consequences in the trade of industrial products and food, as well as other activities.

Bibliography

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Brook, Larmer. “Can China Save the Yellow—Its Mother River?” National Geographic, May 2008.

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Tetsuya, Kusuda. The Yellow River: Water and Life. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2010.