Historical environmental changes in the Poyang Lake basin (Yangtze River, China) and impacts on agricultural activities

Maofeng He, Fengxian Bu*, Claudio O. Delang, Jialin Xie, Quan Ye, Hongfei Zhao, Qilin He, Wenming He

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Climate change and human activities have been an important part of studies regarding historical environmental changes in China over the past 2000 years. In this study, we focused on environmental changes, that is, natural disasters and human activities, in the Poyang Lake Basin over the past 2000 years, to analyze interactions between land use cover changes and human activities from the perspective of regional sustainable development. We collected historical records of climate and hydrology, floods and droughts, and rivers and lakes in the Poyang Lake area, and established time sequences for the floods and droughts, lake water level and lake area, amount of farming land, and population, in order to discuss interactions between changes in the environment and the climate, with emphasis on the impacts of extreme events on lake and river basin environment changes. The following results were obtained. First, climate changes in historical periods had wide-ranging and far-reaching impacts on agricultural production, especially disasters caused by climate change. Among the changes in the Poyang Lake basin environment, including river network systems, lake water levels, etc., changes in lake water volume are direct evidence of climate change, adaptation to climate change, and obvious phased characteristics. Second, in the process of changes to the lake and river network in the Poyang Lake Basin, social and economic development is accompanied by evolution of the lake. Increases and decreases in population, the scale of agricultural production, and lake environment changes have direct and significant interactions. Third, the Poyang Lake basin’s environmental changes during the historical period are mainly reflected in the pressure feedback mode of “population–agriculture” in the lake environment.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)17-28
    Number of pages12
    JournalHolocene
    Volume32
    Issue number1-2
    DOIs
    Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 8 Oct 2021

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Global and Planetary Change
    • Archaeology
    • Ecology
    • Earth-Surface Processes
    • Palaeontology

    User-Defined Keywords

    • agriculture activities
    • climate extreme evens
    • environment changes
    • flood and drought
    • Poyang Lake

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