ON THE CHANGES OF WATER ENVIRONMENT AND THE RISE AND FALL OF XUZHOU CITY
DAI Pei-chao1, SHEN Zheng-ping1,2
1. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China;
2. Huaihai Development Research Institute, Xuzhou 221009, China
Abstract Water is essential to the development of city, severe flooding may lead to "city crash" tragedy. Xuzhou city has suffered from the continuous pain of floods in its history. The migration of Yellow River to the South in particular, contributed largely to the decline of the city. The article mainly discusses on how the change of water environment in the territory had the major implications for Xuzhou city's rise and fall. Studies have shown that: ① the Yellow River has great effect on changes of water system in Xuzhou and also has enormous impact on the city's rise and fall, which lasted nearly 700 years (from 1194 A. D. when the Yellow River invaded the Huaihe River to1885 A. D. detour to Shandong province); ② good water environment has played a great role in agricultural production, commodity trade and urban construction of Xuzhou in history. The city's prosperity, good harvests and busy water transport often happened in the same period; ③ after the founding of People's Republic of China, the water system has been gradually restored with governance in the territory of Xuzhou, especially in the mid-1980s; ④ nowadays, the use of water resources has become more extensive and in-depth than any time in history.
2013, Vol. 28 
