Yangtze River

This paper reviews five of the eight species of acipenseriforms that occur in China, chiefly those of the Amur and Yangtze rivers. Kaluga Huso dauricus and Amur sturgeon Acipenser schrenckii are endemic to the Amur River. Both species still support fisheries, but stocks are declining due to overfishing. Acipenseriformes of the Yangtze River are primarily threatened by hydroelectric dams that block free passage to spawning and feeding areas. The Chinese paddlefish Psephurus gladius now is rare in the Yangtze River system, and its spawning activities were severely limited by completion of the Gezhouba Dam in 1981. Since 1988, only 3–10 adult paddlefishes per year have been found below the dam. Limited spawning still exists above the dam, but when the new Three Gorges Dam is complete, it will further threaten the paddlefish. Artificial propagation appears to be the only hope for preventing extinction of P. gladius, but it has yet to be successfully bred in captivity. Dabry’s sturgeon A. dabryanusis a small, exclusively freshwater sturgeon found only in the Yangtze River system. It is concentrated today in reaches of the main stream above Gezhouba Dam. The fishery has been closed since 1983, but populations continue to decline. Acipenserdabryanus has been cultured since the 1970s, and holds promise for commercial aquaculture; availability of aquacultural methods offer shope for enhancing natural populations. The Chinese sturgeon A. sinensis occurs in the Yangtze and Pearl rivers and seas of east Asia. There is still disagreement about the taxonomy of the Pearl and Yangtze River populations. The Yangtze River population is anadromous. Adults begin spawning at about age 14 years (males) and 21 years (females), and adults spend over 15 months in the river for reproduction. Spawning sites of A. sinensis were found every year since 1982 below the Gezhouba Dam, but it seems that insufficient suitable ground is available for spawning. Since 1983, commercial fishing has been prohibited but more measures need to be taken such as establishing protected areas and characterizing critical spawning, summering and wintering habitats.

Shanghai Administrative Region (SAR) is located on the deltaic deposit of the Yangtze River. The bed rock under SAR is generally buried in the depth of 200 m to 300 m except for several massifs, where the bed rock is exposed to the ground surface. The Quaternary deposit in Shanghai is soft sediment. The variation of palaeoclimate influenced the sea level and resulted in a very complicated sedimentary environment. The Quaternary deposit in SAR is composed of an alternated multi-aquifer-aquitard system (MAAS). The groundwater system is composed of one artesian aquifer and five confined aquifer layers with very high groundwater pressure head. The MAAS was formed mainly within the warm geological era updated to 2.6 million years ago. Between two aquifers, there is an aquitard which is composed of soft clayey soil formed mainly within the cold era. The aquitards are composed of very soft clayey silt with very high compressibility and humus content. The humus material was transformed into methane gas under a long-term geological process. With the development of economy, the infrastructures were (or are being) constructed in the top shallow soft clayey deposit, aquifer I and aquifer II. In SAR, the following geohazards occurred or possibly occur during the construction and maintenance of infrastructures: i) quicksand and piping hazards; ii) pumping-induced hazards and recharge-cutoff hazards; iii) long-term settlement due to the seasonal fluctuation of groundwater level; and iv) geohazards of methane gas.

This guide supports viewers in discussing the “New China,” the importance of social class in Chinese society, and understanding lessons some of the film’s protagonists learned from working on a cruise ship traveling the Yangtze River.

FILM SYNOPSIS: Nearing completion, China's massive Three Gorges Dam is altering the landscape and the lives of people living along the fabled Yangtze River. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will lose their homes and livelihoods.

*Served as one of the guide producers.

The law of universal gravitation came about, as the legend goes, from experiencing (or 'observing', as a variation on the theme) an apple fall. This was 1666 and the famous question that arose in the mind of one of the premier scientific minds of all times was: Why did the apple fall down (and not rise up)? From this initial puzzle, started much of the scientific ideas about the earth and the moon. In fact, we can take this to be the necessary condition for any scientific enquiry, namely, curiosity. Compare this questioning spirit with another question that was posed about 300 years later: Why does the word " can " appear at the beginning of the following sentence when it is clearly associated with the verb " swim " ?
(1) Can the eagles that fly swim?

In this article, I deal with the historical development of the Japanese language by applying a multi-disciplinary approach that uses data from a variety of fields. My research indicates that the home-land of the Japonic language family may have been in the lower Yangtze River Valley, from where its speakers moved to the Korean Peninsula and eventually to Japan during the Yayoi period. This spread is associated with the dispersal of wet rice agriculture from the area south of the Yangtze River via the northeastern Asian mainland, where it was in contact with cultures cultivating millet. Old Japanese mythology and genealogical data suggests that the earliest known ethnic group that spoke Japonic may have been the Hayato people of southern Kyūshū.

The authors summarise the latest evidence for the introduction of rice cultivation into northern China, and show that it most probably began there in the early seventh millennium BC as a result of influence or migration from the Yangtze Valley.

This article examines the sources of variation in Chinese workplace governance between otherwise similar parts of the country. Jiangsu's portion of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Guangdong's portion of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) are both booming export hubs with large numbers of migrant workers. Yet, in the former region, authorities manage conflict with orthodoxy and coaxing; in the latter, with experimentation and coercion. Using interviews and government yearbooks, the article conceives of the YRD and PRD as 'regional fields' within the broader 'field' of Chinese labour politics. Greater worker militancy and organization is pushing the PRD field off-balance, yielding more innovative but brutal policies. Although it has become common to explain governance in China from an elite perspective, grassroots contention is thus key. Bottom-up pressures generate top-down policy. This, the author contends, is true even under Xi Jinping.

The effects of flooding on rhizospheric organic acid concentrations of three abundant flooding tolerant plant species (Alternanthera philoxeroides Mart., Arundinella anomala Steud., Salix variegata Franch.) from the water fluctuation zone of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR, Yangtze River) were investigated. Soil solution samples of eight low molecular weight organic acids were obtained from rhizotrons using micro suction cups during 3 weeks of waterlogging, after 6 weeks flooding and after a 1 week recovery. To estimate the contribution of water temperature and microbial community, plants in sterile glass bead substrate and original Yangtze sediment were submerged in laboratory at +10°, +20° and +30°C. Waterlogged plants did seldom express a significantly different pattern of rhizospheric organic acid (OA) composition compared to control plants. Flooding caused no burst of organic acid concentration in soil solution: All species express a silencing strategy. Average OA levels were higher in A. anomala rhizosphere than in the other two species, but increased again after resurfacing in all species. Temperature had a stronger influence in sediment than in sterile setup. In contrast to field measurements, succinate, malate and citrate were detected in the sterile setup. Microbial contribution appeared to have great influence on increasing OA occurrence.

Within a wide body of literature it has been argued and demonstrated that community participation in tourism development is advantageous in terms of the sustainability and effectiveness of the development policies adopted. However, over time, doubts have been raised about whether community participation should take place in developing countries. There are major concerns regarding the immaturity and the incompliance of the political and social conditions of developing countries in relation to the requirements necessary for an effective participatory planning. In this paper, we argue that mega-events, due to their wide scope and the key role that large groups of stakeholders play in their success, may represent a driver for community participation in developing countries. In order to explore our idea, we will analyse tourism development and the planning of a mega-event within the Yangtze River Delta area, driven by the organisation and preparation of the Shanghai World Expo. According to our evidence, some initial elements of participative decision-making have indeed developed around the organisation of this mega-event, even though China has historically been considered refractory towards community participation. Finally, we discuss the findings in the light of existing knowledge to elicit significant questions about community participation in tourism development within developing countries and to address further research on this topic.