Study finds flow rates in five major northern basins fell, including a 95% decline in the Hai River basin
New research shows that despite many Chinese cities increasingly being hit by extreme rainfall, the volume of water in China’s rivers has fallen over 60 years, particularly in the country’s north.
The researchers found that from 1956 to 2016, some 756 – or 72 per cent – of the 1,046 hydrological stations in China reported a decline in run-off, with 593 stations showing a decrease of less than 40 per cent and 163 stations showing a drop of more than 40 per cent.
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The study was led by the Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the team’s findings published in the journal Science Advances on Thursday.
