|
|
|
|
Yellow River
Tue Dec 13, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
The Yellow River, second longest river in China, is drying out. And according to researchers, 120 million people may go thirsty in this region, along with their crops and cattle. Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook’s Climate Change series.
The study, called Yellow River at Risk, was commissioned by Greenpeace, and carried out by a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The scientists found that glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are melting and breaking apart due to planet-wide warming. As the glaciers shrink, less water flows downstream, the permafrost melts, and the once-fertile land turns into desert at the rate of 1.83 percent per year. So far almost 35 percent of the Yellow River’s source region has become “desertified,” opening it up to invasion by warmer weather species, such as rats and insects, and threatening indigenous animals like the snow leopard.
Some scientists believe that areas like the poles and higher altitudes, such as Tibet, will be the first to suffer significant effects from global warming. And according to this study, seventeen percent of the Yellow’s source glaciers have disappeared. Says the report’s leading author, Professor Liu Shiyin, “Climate change is at the root of the problem; from here it is a domino effect that harms the flora, fauna, landscape and people of the Yellow River source region – and ultimately the river itself.”
The Yellow River is not the only water source facing such a crisis: the Tibetan Plateau is also the source for China’s longest river, the Yangtze, The Mekong River of Southeast Asia, and India’s sacred Ganges River. In June of 2005, a team from Greenpeace went in to document the changes; for a link to what they found, visit our website at www.weathernotebook.org.
The Weather Notebook’s Climate Change series is funded by Environmental Defense. Regular support for our show is provided by Subaru of America.
Today's Links
http://activism.greenpeace.org/yellowriver/en.html
|
|
