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Building Up the Yellow River Delta
2020-10-24
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148145/building-up-the-yellow-river-delta
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
About this work
According to ancient Chinese myth, the source of the Huang He (Yellow River) extends all the way to the Milky Way, which itself was thought to be a celestial river connecting Earth and heaven. Modern day geographers tell a different story: the river starts as snow and ice on the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province.
The river’s name comes from the abundant yellow-tinted silt the water picks up and transports eastward as it winds through the dusty, friable landscapes of the Loess Plateau in northwest China. By the time the river reaches flat coastal plains in the east and pours into the Bohai Sea, it has spanned nearly 5500 kilometers (3,400 miles), making it the sixth-longest river system in the world.
The Yellow River Delta is an unusually dynamic place. As the river flows into the delta, large amounts of sediment drop to the shallow bottom, building up new land if there is sufficient material to overcome the erosive forces of waves and tides. The river historically carried sediment loads that exceeded 1.6 billion tons per year, earning it a reputation as one of the muddiest rivers in the world.
All the sediment means that few other rivers have a history of silting up,…
