Urbanization and its impacts on water environment in tumen river basin

Abstract

The trans-boundary scope of the Tumen River Basin (TRB) going through China, Russia and DPRK has been defined, and on the basis of this, status of urbanization and its impacts on water environment in recent 20 years in TRB have been analyzed. Urbanization in TRB can be characterized as: 1) There is medium level of overall urbanization in TRB. Certain distance still exists compared with developed countries. And it is lower than the average urbanization level of Russia and higher than that of China. 2) There is unbalanced distribution of urbanization development in TRB. Urbanization in China part owns the character of low starting point and high-speed development. In Russia part, character of urbanization can be described as high starting point and stable development. In DPRK part, urbanization level is low, and motive power lacks. 3) Due to large population, in China part there is broader region urbanized, larger radius and higher frequency of human activities, which lead to heavier pressure on environment. Meanwhile, the paper has pointed that impacts of urbanization on water environment are as follows: 1) Urban population growth and industry development increase the demand for freshwater, and also exacerbate the contradiction between limited water supply and increasing freshwater demand. 2) Urban infrastructure doesn’t match with urban productive function especially treatment facilities, which results in the pollution of the Tumen River. 3) The pollution situation in the Tumen River got peak point in 1995, and presently, such situation has been improved in great scale, due to effective interventions adopted. However, there still exist 2 enterprises that are urgent to be harnessed. Moreover, pollution of municipal sewage will become more and more apparent. 4) The influence of urbanization on soil is mainly caused by industrial effluent and slag, and polluted water irrigation. Soil and water loss has also been a serious problem caused by urbanization. 5) Urbanization results in the decrease of wetlands area. Furthermore, the paper has given a brief account of the perspective and recommendations on urbanization and environmental impacts.