Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges are known to be a famous tourist attraction for its beautiful scenery, located in northeastern China along the Yangzi River. The Yangzi River runs 3700 miles long, being the third longest river in the world after the Nile and Amazon Rivers. The Qutang Gorge, the Wuxia Gorge, and the Xiling Gorge are the three Yangzi River gorges that make up the Three Gorges. The Three Gorges are not only famous for its scenery, but also its disastrous flooding. Within a century, five major floods have occurred killing over 300,000 people living in cities along the bank of the river. This is due to the constant sediment deposits along the river, causing the river bed to
…show more content…
Export Import Bank are unwilling to provide financial assistance for the construction of the dam. Therefore, most costs will be depended upon the national energy tax, government bonds, and any other trust funds raised. The dam will produce the energy of 84 billion kilowatt hours per year, which is enough to supply 11-15% of China's energy. Project loans and interest is planned to be paid off by this energy generated in 2-3 years upon completion of the dam. The inexpensive electricity and cheap river transportation is expected to turn this region into an international investment.
The Yangzi River acts as a transportation highway for people living along the banks of the river. The reservoir will become a great advantage to those travelling along the river. It will help bring ships inland, allowing about 50 million tonnes of extra freight to be transported along the river each year. The project will "reduce freight costs and facilitate trade in the area."[4]
Many people have criticised the actual value of the dam. People have claimed that coal supply has kept pace with China's development, keeping energy prices low; the dam is unnecessary since "electricity prices will remain so low that the project will never pay for itself."[5] Some have also complained that the dam will destroy the Yangzi scenery, which would result in less revenue
We’ll start with the Nile River.The Nile is 4,000 miles long!The Nile is bigger than the Tigris and Euphrates.The Nile also makes two huge bends that make an S shape that is 1,000 miles long.The Nile also floods,Just like ours.Our rivers are alike because when the Nile floods they use it for farming.
Starting in 468 BCE during the Zhou dynasty, the Grand Canal took about 6 million peasants about a millennium to build. The construction of this canal finally finished in 610 CE under Emperor Yangdi of the Sui dynasty. Changing China’s staple from millet and wheat to rice was the main reason of the building of the canal, but it also helped Chinese economy by connecting the more productive southern China to the capitals in northern china. It increased interdependence between the north and the south. One section of the Grand Canal was also intended to supply Chinese armies which led to better defense and administration in China. Also, in building the canal, officials were required to work together, so the Grand Canal brought better authority and unity to political officials. The downside of this canal, though, was the number of peasants killed in constructing it. Over half of the 6 million peasants employed to build the canal died in building it, which was a reason the Sui dynasty fell. The great Grand Canal set the foundation for the great Tang dynasty.
“Floodwater dashed up against the skies... God issued a command allowing Yu to spread out the self-replacing soil so as to quell the foods in the Nine Provinces.” This myth from China’s remote past may reflect stories about the efforts of early rulers to control the flood waters of the Huang River- the mighty river that has been central to Chinese civilization since the earliest of times.” (Holt, World History textbook, 76). China is located in the far east side of Asia. They have very rugged mountains in the west, some of the tallest in the world. In the south there are many plateaus, moving north; there are semi-deserts. The heart of China, the China Proper, has been significant though it’s early years. China has three major rivers that they used for transportation, crops, and ect. they are
The first cause is global warming, it has a lot of impact on the water. In the documents it says,“Global warming has had an undeniable effect on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau which is the source of water for the yangtze and yellow rivers”(Document A). This states that global warming effects the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and that causes water to disappear. Another piece of evidence is, “The glacier’s seasonal melting keeps the rivers flowing during the dry seasons, but as the glaciers retreat by more and more every year, there would be less water during the dry seasons” (Document A). As it can be seen, the glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau are melting faster than they are suppose to, and when they melt all the way there won't be any water left for the dry seasons.That is why global warming has had an effect on water shortages, but urbanization has also had lots of other effects.
Due to the water-rich Yangtze River Basin, China has been able to provide clean water to much of the highly populated region, even in the face of growing population.
The dam is expected to produce approximately 18.2 million kilowatts of energy per year which will greatly benefit the power needs of central China. The largest validation of the dam is this property – power generation. These 18.2 million kilowatts “generated from its 26 700-megawatt turbine generators, equals the energy produced by 18 nuclear plants or the burning of 40 million tons of coal.”[6] The amount of power produced will
Ancient river valley civilizations economy were heavily relied on trade.In ancient China, people heavily relied on the silk road to trade.The silk road allowed China to communicate with other civilizations like India. The silk road were used to trade silk,
When it came to water like the Romans Chinese were controlling it like putty in their hands. The main thing was the grand canal which brought water from one city to another and acted as a road way. The Grand Canal is the world 's longest man-made waterway, being 1,800 kilometers long. The canal connects the present cities of Beijing in the north and Hangzhou in the south, which served as dynastic capitals in the past, and contains 24 locks and 60 bridges. Since most of China 's major rivers flow from west to east, the fact that the Grand Canal runs north and south provides it as an important connector between the Yangtze River valley and the Yellow River valley. A good example of their care for water is in Document 1 “I request that you establish water conservation offices in each district and staff them with people who are experienced in the ways of water.” When it says this you can tell how much they care about the water. Both societies clearly had a good grip on the control of water, for their benefit and their pleasure.
In addition, farmland has been destroyed because of the floods and the decrease in delta sediment. The dam has reduced downstream nutrients and sediment flow. And has seriously impacted neighboring river and seacoast ecosystems.
All of the major rivers go in a western to eastern direction, and end up in the Pacific Ocean. The two major rivers of China are the Yangtze and the Huan He. The major river of North China is the Huang He, or
The Great Wall of China stretches about 5,500 miles long crossing deserts, mountains, grasslands, and plateaus. It took more than 2,000 years to build this incredible manmade structure. Many people died to build this wall. It displays the changes between the agricultural and nomadic civilizations. It proves that the superb structure was very important to military defense. It became a national symbol of the Chinese as a security for their country and its people. The Great Wall of China must be preserved at all cost because it is a historical symbol that made it possible for China and other nations across the world to prosper (UNESCO World Heritage Centre: The Great Wall).
The book Gifts of the Nile Valley tells the history of, not only one of Africa's greatest and most important natural monuments, The Nile River, but also uses that history to link the earliest traces of mankind to Africa. The begging of the book explains the importance of the Nile River both for mankind and for the environment around it. The beginning chapters also explain how the Nile River actually works, which I personally found very interesting. According to the book the Nile River is the longest River in the world , stretching as long as 4,132 miles. It also functions much differently than normal rivers. Unlike other rivers, The Nile River flows south to north. Also, while normal rivers need to be fed rain and connected to other bodies of water, The Nile River runs through mostly desert and does not get any rain. The Nile is also not connected to any other body of water. As bizarre as that is, its not the most impressive thing that this legendary river can do. Throughout its entire length, The Nile river has somehow managed to fertilize the soil around it for up to ten miles. It's believed that through this river, Civilizations from thousands of years ago managed to sustain themselves.
"The river rises of itself, waters the fields, and then sinks back again; thereupon each man sows his field and waits for the harvest" (Parsons, 1996-2010), these are the words of Herodotus the great Greek philosopher. "The Nile Valley is a canyon running 660 miles long with a floodplain occupying 4,250 square miles" (Parsons, 1996-2010), being a rich source of water the Nile River is the largest river in the world. This majestic river delivers and provides a constant water supply to the people of Egypt giving them an abundance of natural resource available where they lived along
The Banqiao Dam was built on the Ru River in the western Henan province of China (Typhoon Nina–Banqiao dam failure, 2014). The dam had been completed in 1952 as an effort to control the Yellow River by providing flood prevention, and electricity production (Typhoon Nina–Banqiao dam failure, 2014). The dam was built with a storage capacity of 492 million cubic meters, enough to sustain a 1,000 year flood (Typhoon Nina–Banqiao dam failure, 2014). Shortly after construction, cracks emerged in the dam (Fish, 2013). From 1955-1956, the dam was reinforced utilizing Soviet engineering specifications (Fish, 2013). Upon completion, the dam gained the moniker “Iron Dam” (Fish, 2013) as a nod to its indestructibility.
Water is a human right, not a commodity. It is the essence of life, sustaining every living being on the planet. Without it we would have no plants, no animals, no people. However, while water consumption doubles every twenty years our water sources are being depleted, polluted and exploited by multinational corporations. Water privatization has been promoted by corporations and international lending institutions as the solution to the global water crises but the only one’s who benefit from water privatization are investors and international banks. The essential dilemma of privatization is that the profit interests of private water utilities ultimately jeopardizes the safeguarding of the human right to water. Access to clean, sufficient