PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 10: Restoration and Adaptive Management
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal

The Han River Watershed Management Programme for the South-to-North Water Transfer Project of China.

Zhang, Quanfa^*,1, Jiang, Mingxi¹, Xu, Zhifang², Shen, Zehao³, ¹ Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, P.R.China² Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R.China³ Beijing University, Beijing, P.R.China

ABSTRACT- In 2002, China launched the three-route South-to-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) with a capacity of transferring a total of 44.5 billion cubic meters of water from the Yangtze River to drought north China by 2050. Of its three routes (i.e., east, middle and west), the middle one will raise the height of the Danjiangkou Reservoir dam on the upper Han River, a tributary with an area of approximately150,000 km2 of the Yangtze River in its middle reach, and inundate 370 km2 of land area resulting in relocation of some 300,000 people. Changes in aquatic environment in the lower reach of the Han River are also expected due to the decrease in the annual runoff by 22%. Meanwhile, water quality in the upper Han River is of great concern because of non-point pollution resulting from land use change being intensified by the relocation program and that there are no adequate sewage treatment facilities for a total of 13 million people. A watershed management program has been implemented on the Han River Basin by the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2004. The objective is to develop an integrated watershed management system to monitor water quality in the basin and examine the causes of water condemnation for the SNWTP. The program is composed of five activities: characterization of riparian ecosystems, determination of spatial and temporal variations of water quality, quantification of land use and land cover change, nutrient cycling of representative ecosystems, and finally an integrated information management for the basin. It is intended to quantify ecosystem services in the basin with respect to water quality and address ecological security in relation to sustainable development by the implementation of the water transfer project.

Key words: Watershed management, Land use and land cover, water quality, south-to-north water transfer