Watershed Environmental Degradation and Sustainable Development: The Case of the Yellow River Basin

This volume is a continuation of the author’s book Watershed Erosion Processes (Springer, 2021). Expanding on this previous work, author Tongxin Zhu systematically explores the major environmental issues and solutions for achieving sustainable development in China’s large, complex Yellow River Basin. The basin, located in northern China, has a drainage area of 290,343 square miles. The Yellow River, the second longest river in China and the sixth longest river in the world, passes through seven provinces and two autonomous regions within which more than 100 million people reside. As the cradle of Chinese civilization, the Yellow River Basin has had a long history of human habitation. Rapid population growth in recent history and fragile environment conditions in the basin have created a range of environmental problems, including soil erosion, sedimentation, desertification, water pollution and shortage, salination, loss of vegetation cover and biodiversity, and so on. Global warming further intensifies snow/glacial melting and permafrost degradation and increases the frequency and magnitude of extreme climatic events (e.g., floods, droughts etc.). In the past few decades, massive efforts have been made to tackle the abovementioned problems through conservation, restoration, and management in the watershed. In this volume, the author tackles many issues related to this watershed, including but not limited to soil conservation, water quality, land use, and the effects of climate change.