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AMBIO 2012, 41:682698DOI 10.1007/s13280-012-0290-5
REVIEW PAPER
Socio-economic Impacts on Flooding: A 4000-Year History of the Yellow River, China
Yunzhen Chen, James P. M. Syvitski,Shu Gao, Irina Overeem, Albert J. Kettner
Received: 28 December 2011 / Revised: 25 March 2012 / Accepted: 11 April 2012 / Published online: 5 June 2012
Abstract We analyze 4000-year ood history of the lower Yellow River and the history of agricultural development in the middle river by investigating historical writings and quantitative time series data of environmental changes in the river basin. Flood dynamics are characterized by positive feedback loops, critical thresholds of natural processes, and abrupt transitions caused by socio-economic factors. Technological and organizational innovations were dominant driving forces of the ood history. The popularization of iron plows and embankment of the lower river in the 4th century
BC initiated a positive feedback loop on levee breaches. The strength of the feedback loop was enhanced by farming of coarse-sediment producing areas, steep hillslope cultivation, and a new river management paradigm, and nally pushed the ood frequency to its climax in the seventeenth century. The co-evolution of river dynamics and Chinese society is remarkable, especially farming and soil erosion in the middle river, and central authority and river management in the lower river.
Keywords Co-evolution Flood history
Human activities Positive feedback loop Yellow River
INTRODUCTION
The Yellow River is Chinas mother river, feeding a 4000-year-old Chinese civilization. During the last two millennia the river has proved to be violent. The ash oods carry enormous amounts of silt generated from thousands of gullies downstream, resulting in highly perched oodplain channels with levees that often failed, devastating villages and cities and their people.
Kaifeng located at the apex of the Yellow alluvial fan has been at the epicenter of the Yellow River ooding
(Fig. 1). Since the 4th century BC seven oods have devastated the city. After each ood survivors rebuilt a new city on the same site. Six Kaifeng cities now lie buried under silt with the oldest fossil city buried 10-m underground (Qiu 2004).
Historical documents document [1000 oods occurring in 4000 years. In the last millennium, the river has shifted its lower course every ~25 years (Fig. 2), breached its levees once a year, and during the mid seventeenth...