At the beginning of the new year, the turbulent and clear water of the Yellow River at Hukou Waterfall in the Yellow River has attracted widespread attention from netizens. Someone said, "The clarity of the Yellow River is like a mirror, reflecting our joy."
On closer examination, the transformation of our mother river, the Yellow River, from clear to turbidity is a gradual natural and historical process.
According to the common people's understanding, the river is a process of continuous accumulation of water, starting from the upstream, the river continues to join in to strengthen the power, and finally form a surging river. However, the uniqueness of the Yellow River lies in the fact that most of its water is collected in the upper reaches, and the amount of water in the middle and lower reaches is getting smaller and smaller. By the time Lanzhou arrived, it accounted for 70% of the Yellow River's total water, but the area of the basin above Lanzhou was about 250,000 square kilometers, accounting for only 33% of the total area of the Yellow River basin. In other words, most of the Yellow River's water is collected above Lanzhou.
The source of the upper reaches of the Yellow River is as clear as a mirror, flowing below Lanzhou, especially after passing through the Loess Plateau, the sediment content of the Yellow River increases sharply. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, the Yellow River and its tributaries carried very little sediment, and the water in the Shanxi region was still drinkable. By the spring and autumn periods, the water in this area was no longer clear. During the Warring States period, some people already called the Yellow River "Turbid River". The explanation of "river" in "Erya", which came out later, is as follows: "The river comes out of Kunlun and is white, and the canal is one thousand seven hundred and one rivers, and the color is yellow."
In the Qin and Han dynasties, due to the direct use of the Yellow River by human beings and the economic development level of the Yellow River Basin, the surface vegetation of the Loess Plateau was also affected like never before, and the sediment transport of the Yellow River increased at an astonishing rate. According to the "Hanshu Gou Xun Zhi", the Yellow River "is heavy and turbid, and the number is one stone of water and six buckets of mud". During this period, people began to call this ancient river the "Yellow River".
The ancients paid attention to the topic of "Yellow River Qing", and the culmination of the collection is the "Collection of Ancient and Modern Books" (below) in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.
In this book, "Mountains and Rivers", the historical materials of the clarification of the Yellow River from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty are collected in detail. Standing on the shoulders of the ancients, according to the materials currently available, the earliest record of the phenomenon of the Qing Dynasty of the Yellow River was in the ninth year of Emperor Guangwu's establishment (33 AD), when "the plain (now Pingyuan County, Shandong Province) was clear". Since then, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Sui, the Tang, the Five Dynasties, the Song, the Jin, the Yuan, the Ming and the Qing Dynasties have records about the Yellow River and the Qing Dynasty, among which the information of the Ming and Qing dynasties is the most abundant, including the official history, miscellaneous history, local chronicles and inscriptions, etc., a total of 65 times. The closest to us is the report of the "Declaration" on February 2, 1935, in Shilou, Shanxi, the Yellow River was recorded for the 67th time that the river was clear and bottomed out.
How clear does the water of the Yellow River have to be before it can be called "clear" by the ancients? Judging from the terms used by the ancestors to record the Yellow River Qing, the most common and simple is "Heqing" before the Song Dynasty and "Huangheqing" after the Song Dynasty. The more detailed records mainly include the "Ten Miles of Mirror" in the second year of Baoding in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, the "Clear as Well Water" in the second year of Tang Qianyuan, the "Clear to the Bottom" in September of the first year of Tang Baoying, the "Slim Scales are Seen" in the Jin Dynasty, the "Clear and Bright to the Bottom" in the fifteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty, the "Fish and Turtles are Visible" in the eighth year of Ming Zhengde, and the "Clear and Abnormal" in the fourth year of Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty.
These different expressions not only show that there were differences in the degree of clarity at that time, but also show that it is difficult for people to have a unified standard for people's perception of "clear". In fact, the historical "Yellow River is clear" is only that the sediment discharge of the Yellow River is significantly lower than the average level of normal years, but it is "abnormal" and "slightly clear", which cannot be equated with being as clear as groundwater. As for the records of "clear as well water", "bottoming out" and "seeing all the scales", it is just that the Yellow River is too small to cause it to be crystal clear.
Careful attention to the law of the Yellow River clearing, it can be found that only when there are abnormal conditions in a large area in the basin, such as continuous drought and little rain, too cold in winter, etc., will the Yellow River water change and the phenomenon of river clearing. The clearing of the Yellow River is sometimes a precursor to drought and the Yellow River's broken flow. At the same time, the Yellow River and Qing Dynasty have been intertwined with social politics, culture and life in different periods, becoming a unique cultural landscape.
On the other hand, in the historical context, the Yellow River and the Loess set the stage, and the ancestors appeared as protagonists and screenwriters one after another, creating the second milestone of the Yellow River Basin - the origin of agriculture. The main reason why the water of the Yellow River has changed from clear to turbid is that frequent human activities have brought destructive and catastrophic effects on the already fragile ecological environment of the Yellow River Basin.
Historically, in order to cure the Yellow River, from Dayu to the Ming Dynasty Pan Jitao "harnessing water and attacking sand", from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty "gourd plugging" to Emperor Kangxi carved "river affairs, Cao Yun" on the pillars of the palace ......A history of arduous governance of pornography condenses the history of suffering, struggle, and governance of the Chinese nation. For a long time, constrained by subjective and objective conditions such as natural conditions, the level of productive forces, the social system, and man-made sabotage, the situation of repeated governance of the Yellow River has never been fundamentally improved, and the good wishes of the Yellow River have been difficult to realize.
The age-old problem of harnessing the Yellow River has historically been handed over to the Communist Party of China. In 1946, the Communist Party of China (CPC) established the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee in the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area, opening a new chapter in the people's governance of the Yellow River. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was determined to lead the people to fundamentally change the history of the Yellow River's tyrannical abuse. After more than 70 years of arduous exploration and unremitting struggle, the Communist Party of China has handed over an unprecedented and excellent answer sheet for the control of pornography.
In 1946, the Communist Party of China (CPC) led the establishment of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee in the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area in Heze, Shandong Province. Since then, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Yellow River has made significant achievements in the management and protection of the Yellow River, creating a miracle of the great flood in the autumn and the years of peace. The picture shows farmers in Muli Township (now Muli Town), Zibo City, Shandong Province, working on the construction site of Huanghuang control.
The Yellow River is clear this time, and there are three factors: time, location, and people. First of all, the climate is supported by the lack of rain in winter. With less rainfall, the Yellow River carries less sediment. Judging from the changes in precipitation in winter in China, there is indeed not much rainfall in the northern region, and there are also zero rainfall areas in the Yellow River Basin, among which Gansu, Qinghai and other places are the most obvious. Shaanxi is slightly better, and there is still 1 to 10 mm of cumulative rainfall covering, so from the rainfall in the Yellow River Basin, it has a certain effect on the Yellow River water.
The second is that the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River have been working for a long time to do a good job in soil and water conservation, and vigorously promote the protection of the ecological environment in the Yellow River Basin. The upper reaches of the Yellow River, from the source of the river to Hekou Town in Inner Mongolia, are 3,472 kilometers long, and are important water conservation areas in the Yellow River Basin, especially in the source area of the three rivers, known as the "Chinese Water Tower". In view of the degradation of ecosystems and the reduction of water conservation functions in local areas, this region should promote the implementation of a number of major ecological protection, restoration and construction projects to improve the water conservation capacity.
The middle reaches of the Yellow River 7The 860,000 square kilometers of sandy and coarse sand area is the main sediment in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. In recent years, the local government has adhered to the systematic management of small watersheds, built and rebuilt silt dams and sand dams, and promoted the conversion of sloping cultivated land into terraces. The area of soil erosion in the basin increased from 26 in 2018960,000 square kilometers fell to 26 in 2020270,000 square kilometers, the area and intensity of soil erosion have achieved a "double decline".
As early as five years ago, some experts visited both sides of the Yellow River and found that more than 80 percent of the river section was clear during the non-flood season, along with the upper reaches of the river, which is basically clean water. From Kaifeng to the mouth of the sea, the Yellow River turns yellow; However, compared to more than 10 years ago, the color is on the lighter side. Experts explained that in the non-flood season, the Xiaolangdi Reservoir discharges clean water, and the silt at the bottom of the river is washed up in the evolution, so as to reproduce the "true color" of the Yellow River.
Since its operation, the Xiaolangdi Water Conservancy Project has effectively brought into play the comprehensive benefits of "flood control, flood prevention, silt reduction, water supply, irrigation and power generation", and has made great contributions to ensuring the safety of people's lives and property, promoting economic and social development, and protecting the ecological environment in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The picture shows the discharge of the Xiaolangdi Dam.
From this point of view, the water of the Yellow River has become clearer, which means that the entire ecosystem of the Yellow River basin is improving. And that's not the end of the story, the ecosystem is still improving. You must know that as early as 2019, NASA and Nature collectively spoke: because of China, the earth is greener than in the past. Satellite data from 2000 to 2017 show that the expansion of the Earth's vegetation area is largely due to China and India. Among them, 42% of China's green area growth is forest, 32% is agricultural land, while India's greening is mainly due to agricultural land (82%), and the forest area growth is only 44%。
The clarity of the Yellow River is also a reminder that the improvement of the ecological environment requires long-term efforts and continuous attention. We should start now and build a better home for ourselves and future generations. It is believed that the Yellow River will become a common thing.
Popular News client Lu Yu).