Hydrological Change and its causes in the river network of the Pearl River Delta

摘要

The West River, the North River and the East River, collectively called the Pearl River, have a total drainage area of 453,690 km2 in southern and southwestern China and flow into the South China Sea. The three rivers join together and form the Pearl River Delta (PRD) with an area of 26,820 km2. The crisscross river network (density: 0.68-1.07 km/km2) in the PRD is one of the most complicated deltaic drainage systems in the world. As the region experiencing the most rapid economic growth in China over the past two decades, the PRD has witnessed massive changes in both the social and the natural environment, leading to an urgent need of studying regional environmental changes caused by intensive human activities. This paper aims to summarize and illustrate a variety of human-induced hydrologic and geomorphic changes in the PRD river network and to present an analysis of the causes and effects of these changes. Findings of this study will help decision-makers to formulate river management and mitigation strategies and policies in the region. The hydrologic characteristics of the PRD river network have been altered to varying degrees in the following three main aspects. First and most importantly, stage has become higher or lower over the past several decades in an uneven manner in different parts of the delta. From the early 1950s to the 1980s, scattered and small embankments were enlarged and combined to expand land mass and reduce flood hazards in the PRD. However, reduction of water surface area and concentration of flow into major channels generally caused stage to go up slightly. Since the early 1990s, stage in the upper part of the PRD has significantly dropped down while the opposite situation has become more and more common in the central PRD where enormous flood damages have occurred. Secondly, corresponding to the stage changes, the stage-discharge relationship has been substantially modified, as evidenced by over 2m drop of stage for the same amount of discharge. Thirdly, the ratio of flow partition into two channels at several river bifurcation points has continuously changed over the past decade. This is an excellent indication of an increasingly larger portion of river flow discharging from the West River channels into the North River delta, which was found to be a major reason making the inner part of the PRD more and more vulnerable to flooding in recent years. Closely associated with the hydrologic changes are alterations of river channel and estuarine morphologies. Such geomorphic changes primarily include noticeable or even alarmingly severe modification of river channel bed, extension of river mouth and contraction of estuary in the study region. It was found that the hydrologic and geomorphic changes that have occurred within a relatively short period of time are mainly consequences of a wide variety of human activities, coupled with influences of natural events, including 1. channel dredging of sand for construction usage, 2. combination of embankments and construction of dams, 3. channel constriction and reduction or complete loss of floodplain, 4. sea level rise, and 5. channel bed erosion by record floods