Returning Farmland to Lakes in the Middle-Lower Yangtze Area: Practices, Challenges and Recommendations

Xing, Ziqiang; Huang, Haosheng; Yuan, Yifei; Liu, Shanshan; Zhao, Zhongnan; Wang, Ding

doi:10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.365

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Third, the floods on the JHP could be alleviated once the flood water can be diverted to the lake/wetland systems in/around the plain. This concept (implemented by the "returning farmland to lakes" policy) has been recently applied to regulate the floods along the entire middle-lower course of the Yangtze River (Xing et al 2022). The above three characteristics well fit the scenarios of the Great Flood depicted by historical texts.…”

Section: Jianghan Plain As the Locale Of The Great Floodmentioning

confidence: 87%

Jianghan plain, the locale of China’s Great Flood four thousand years ago

Guo,

Hsieh,

Gorodetskaya

et al. 2023

Terr Atmos Ocean Sci

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The Yellow River Plain (YRP), being regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization, is traditionally thought to be the locale of the Great Flood, a hazardous flood (or floods) tamed by Yu who started China’s first “dynasty”, Xia, in ~ 2000 BC. However, by integrating published archaeological data, we propose that the Great Flood in fact impacted the Jianghan Plain (JHP) along the middle course of the Yangtze River. The arguments include: (1) around the era of the Great Flood, the most civilized and populated society in East Asia, named the Jianghan society, was located around the JHP (at that time, the habitation on the YRP remained limited); (2) the Jianghan society lived on river resources (shipping and rice growing) and was thus subject to flood risks (but not for the people inhabiting the YRP); (3) the people in the Jianghan society were experienced in dredging moats/ditches for shipping and irrigation; (4) unlike the floods on the YRP that were characterized by dynamic sedimentation and channel avulsion, those on the JHP typically occurred with slow-moving water manageable to ancient people; (5) the JHP has been associated with lake/wetland systems serving as detention basins during floods. Here, the recorded method for controlling the Great Flood, dredging channels to divert flood water to a “sea”, was feasible. Known speleothem paleo-rainfall data from multiple sites show that the climate of the JHP had been wet since the middle Holocene (earlier than the era of the Great Flood) and significantly turned dry after ~ 1850 BC (~ 150 years later than the Great Flood). Thus, the uniqueness of the Great Flood was likely to reflect an increase in land use on the JHP with the expansion of the Jianghan society, and the success in taming this flood was mainly due to the efforts of the society, not by luck.

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Section: Jianghan Plain As the Locale Of The Great Floodmentioning

confidence: 87%