5:15 PM - 6:30 PM
[MIS06-P01] The socio-hydrological interactions in modern China: a case study based on flood events in Yangtze River Basin
Keywords:socio-hydrology, Yangtze River Basin, flood
As the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River has shown its impact on human societies with floods recorded since 12th century. In 1931, the Yangtze River has manifested its force again with one of the deadliest floods ever recorded in Chinese history, causing 422,499 deaths, damages to more than 25.2 million people and 58.7 billion m2 farmland. Similar flood occurred again in 1954, resulting in 31,762 deaths, damages to 18.9 million people and 31.7 billion m2 farmland. Researches have shown 1954 flood being larger and higher compared to 1931 flood. However, it is still unclear for what reason that a more severe flood leading to fewer casualties, especially when there being no significant progress in the countermeasure technique. To answer this question, here we propose a conceptual socio-hydrological framework within which the mutual influence between society and water system is analyzed. We found that before and after 1931 flood, a change of social structure of villages aggravated the vulnerability of agricultural production towards natural hazards, and hydrological extremes speeded-up such structure change afterwards. As for 1954 flood, remolding of village structure strengthened the resilient ability to a certain degree, while the damage was controlled at the cost of rural settlements. Our results demonstrate how the conceptual framework is likely to help comprehend the inner correlation of a pre-industrial society like the early 20th century of China. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for more sophisticated socio-hydrological models, which will likely to be applicable to many other regions and times.