28,000 rivers wiped off the map of China

[Daredevil]

ABOUT 28,000 rivers have disappeared from China's state maps, an absence seized upon by environmentalists as evidence of the irreversible natural cost of developmental excesses.

More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China appear to be missing, according to the 800,000 surveyors who compiled the first national water census, leaving Beijing fumbling to explain the cause.

Only 22,909 rivers covering an area of 100sq km were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found.

Officials blame the apparent loss on climate change, arguing that it has caused waterways to vanish, and on mistakes by earlier cartographers. But environmental experts say the disappearance of the rivers is a real and direct manifestation of headlong, ill-conceived development, where projects are often imposed without public consultation.

The UN considers China one of the 13 countries most affected by water scarcity, as industrial toxins have poisoned historic water sources and were blamed last year for turning the Yangtze an alarming shade of red.

This month, the carcasses of about 16,000 pigs dumped in the river were pulled from its waters, and 1000 dead ducks were found dumped this week in the Nanhe River in Sichuan province.

Ma Jun, a water expert at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the missing rivers were a cause for "great attention" and underscored the urgent need for a more sustainable mode of development.

"One of the major reasons is the over-exploitation of the underground water reserves, while environmental destruction is another reason, because desertification of forests has caused a rain shortage in the mountain areas," Mr Ma said.

Large hydroelectric projects such as the Three Gorges Dam, which diverted trillions of litres of water to drier regions, were likely to have played a role, he said.

The census also charted a decline in water quality. The report came as new Premier Li Keqiang pledged greater transparency on pollution, which Communist Party rulers fear is a potential catalyst for social unrest.

"We must take the steps in advance, rather than hurry to handle these issues when they have caused a disturbance in society," Mr Li said, according to state media.

The missing rivers provoked wistful recollections among Chinese internet users. "The rivers I used to play around have disappeared; the only ones left are polluted, we can't eat the fish in them, they are all bitter," a person using the name Pippi Shuanger wrote on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

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[W.G.Ewald]

Were they intermittent streams?

Intermittent stream

In the United States, an intermittent or seasonal stream is one that only flows for part of the year and is marked on topographic maps with a line of blue dashes and dots.[4]:57-58 A wash or desert wash is normally a dry streambed in the deserts of the American Southwest which flows only after significant rainfall. Washes can fill up quickly during rains, and there may be a sudden torrent of water after a thunderstorm begins upstream, such as during monsoonal conditions. These flash floods often catch travelers by surprise. An intermittent stream can also be called an arroyo in Latin America, a winterbourne in Britain, or a wadi in the Arabic-speaking world.

In Italy an intermittent stream is termed a torrent (Italian torrente). In full flood the stream may or may not be "torrential" in the dramatic sense of the word, but there will be one or more seasons in which the flow is reduced to a trickle or less. Typically torrents have Apennine rather than Alpine sources, and in the summer they are fed by little precipitation and no melting snow. In this case the maximum discharge will be during the spring and autumn. However there are also glacial torrents with a different seasonal regime.

In Australia, an intermittent stream is usually called a creek and marked on topographic maps with a solid blue line.

Stream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[huaxia rox]

28,000 rivers...........do i have the chance to know at least one name of these disapaired rivers??? any relatively major one???

 

[amoy]

Removing Freeways - Restoring Cities

In the 1970s, it was considered a symbol of progress when the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, Korea, was covered and a road and elevated freeway were built above it. But by the year 2000, the Cheonggye area was considered the most congested and noisy part of Seoul, badly in need of revitalization, and people agreed that nothing could be done to improve the area as long as the road and freeway remained.

When Lee Myung-bak was elected Mayor of Seoul in 2001, one of his key campaign promises was to remove this freeway and restore the Cheonggyecheon River. He developed a dramatic plan to remove Seoul's mone major freeway and to accommodate the displaced traffic by building a Bus Rapid Transit system and by cutting automobile use in half.

The Chenoggye freeway ran through the center of Seoul

The restored Cheonggyecheon flows through the center of Seoul.