China’s Yellow River may be the clearest it’s been in 500 years, scientists say
- Study finds there has been a sharp reduction in run-off and sediment in recent decades that is ‘unprecedented over the past five centuries’
- They say a change in the cycle is a result of less rainfall in the region and human activities like irrigation and tree-planting that use a lot of water
The muddy Yellow River flowing through China – the country’s second longest after the Yangtze – could today be the clearest it has been in 500 years, according to a new study.
Spanning 5,464km (3,395 miles), the Yellow River starts high up in Qinghai province in the northwest and flows into the Bohai Sea in eastern Shandong.
Its fertile plains made it the cradle of ancient Chinese civilisation, but sediment is deposited in such vast amounts that the riverbed is elevated, resulting in severe floods over the years that have claimed many lives.
This sediment content in the river was the subject of a study carried out over a period of more than a decade by an international team of scientists. Led by geographer An Zhisheng, from the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xian, the team sought to reconstruct how the Yellow River had changed – going back to 1492.
