Textural research on the main source of the Changjiang River

Abstract

The Chinese people began to research the main source of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River 2,400 years ago. Limited by the scientific level, they did not discover it.

The Tuotuo River was determined as the main source of the Changjiang River in the 1970s. However, this was not correct, because when comparing the length of the Tuotuo River with the Dam River, the glacier length at the headwaters was added to the Tuotuo River, resulting in that the Tuotuo River is 1 km longer than the Dam River, keeping in mind that the glacier can not be regarded as part of the river.

In the summer of 1986, we investigated the source of the Changjiang River, we accurately measured the length of both the Tuotuo and Dam rivers, we discovered that the Dam River was 353.1 km long, and the Tuotuo River was 346.3 km long, the Dam River thus being 6.8 km longer than the Tuotuo River. The discharge of the Dam River is 196.18 m³/sec., 2.6 times as large as that of the Tuotuo River, that of the Tuotuo River is 75.10 m³/ sec. The drainage area of the Dam River is 1.8 times as larger as that of the Tuotuo River; the drainage area of the Dam River is 30,715.7 km², the Tuotuo River is 16,691.0 km².

Through synthetic analysis of the factors mentioned above, we came to the conclusion that the main source of the Changjiang River is the Dam River instead of the Tuotuo River.