A study on thresholds in the change of alluvial fan and delta of the Huanghe river, China

Abstract

In the river systems, the environmental change always undergoes a process from quantitative to qualitative change. The upper limit of the qualitative change is called threshold. When the process reaches or goes beyond the limit, the original event series will be replaced by the other event series. Investigations show that the evolution of the Huanghe River alluvial fan and delta has also under gone a process from quantitative to qualitative change. The geometric forms in each process are roughly the same. This threshold of the geometric forms not only provides us a quantitative index for plotting the periodicity of the alluvial fan and delta, but also is of importance for estimation of the trend of natural environmental change.

It is shown that there are three periodic alluvial fans of the Huanghe River since the middle Holocene and four periodic delta since 1855 A.D., the thresholds of their geometric forms are from 0.93 to 0.94 and from 1.2 to 1.21 respectively.

The changing trend in the past and the natural environmental condition at present indicates that the lower reaches of the Huanghe River has some possibilities to burst its banks at the Dongbatou-Gaocun to flow northward. Therefore some proper protection measures are suggested.