Environmental Flow Management of the Lower Yellow River
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Sun Yangbo, Sun Feng Environmental Flow management is a growing challenge to the river basin management in the World An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Environmental flows provide critical contributions to river health, economic development and poverty alleviation. They ensure the continued availability of the many benefits that healthy river and groundwater systems bring to society. The Yellow River basin is very deficient in water resources and the conflict between supply and demand is prominent. In recent years, a sharp decrease of water quantity and frequent discontinuous flow happened in the lower Yellow River caused by the economic development in the basin area and rapid increase of water consumption. This sharpens the conflict between industrial and agricultural water demand on the one hand and the environmental and ecological conditions on the other, and leads to deficiency of suitable water needed by the ecological system of the estuarine delta. In this case, Environmental Flow Study is going to be a very urgent and important task for us. In order to counter these severe problems, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) reconsidered the water resources management and applied an integrated approach by carrying out the vision of strengthening science and development to establish harmonious co-existence between nature and people, entitled “maintaining the healthy life of the Yellow River”. This was the ultimate goal in the river basin management and started their mission to rejuvenate the Yellow River. The situation has changed dramatically since then, based on the Demand Management, and the Master Plan of the integrated water allocation and regulation. The year of 1997 was the longest dry period ever recorded in the history of the Yellow river, yet it also should be the last year that the river runs dry! Furthermore, the YRCC improved the water resources protection and the water quality-monitoring network the water quality information has been published online, new wastewater treatment plants have been installed and sources of pollution have been controlled. As a result, the Yellow River has seen significant improvements regarding the water quality and ensured safe drinking water and good ecological status. The objective of the study is to provide tools to improve the river basin management and water resource management, includes the definition and evaluation of Environmental Flow in lower Yellow River; Modeling and Simulation based on Ecological and hydraulic requirement; Optimized Water Allocation. This study comprised of field study and model simulation, and Scenario analysis, considered ecological water demand, sediment transportation water demand and water quality, and discussed the Decision support system for water resources management and sustainable development.
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