Yangtze

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Coordinates: 31°23′37″N 121°58′59″E / 31.39361°N 121.98306°E / 31.39361; 121.98306
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Yangzi River
)
For other uses, see Long River (disambiguation), Yangzi (disambiguation), and Changjiang (disambiguation).

Yangtze River
长江
Municipalities
Chongqing and Shanghai
Autonomous regionTibet
CitiesLuzhou, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Yueyang, Wuhan, Jiujiang, Anqing, Tongling, Wuhu, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Nantong, Shanghai
Physical characteristics
SourceDam Qu (Jari Hill)
 • locationTanggula Mountains, Qinghai
 • coordinates32°36′14″N 94°30′44″E / 32.60389°N 94.51222°E / 32.60389; 94.51222
 • elevation5,170 m (16,960 ft)
2nd sourceUlan Moron
 • coordinates33°23′40″N 90°53′46″E / 33.39444°N 90.89611°E / 33.39444; 90.89611
3rd sourceChuma'er River
 • coordinates35°27′19″N 90°55′50″E / 35.45528°N 90.93056°E / 35.45528; 90.93056
4th sourceMuluwusu River
 • coordinates33°22′13″N 91°10′29″E / 33.37028°N 91.17472°E / 33.37028; 91.17472
5th sourceBi Qu
 • coordinates33°16′58″N 91°23′29″E / 33.28278°N 91.39139°E / 33.28278; 91.39139
MouthEast China Sea
 • location
Shanghai and Jiangsu
 • coordinates
31°23′37″N 121°58′59″E / 31.39361°N 121.98306°E / 31.39361; 121.98306
Length6,300 km (3,900 mi)[1]
Basin size1,808,500 km2 (698,300 sq mi)[2]
Discharge 
 • average30,146 m3/s (1,064,600 cu ft/s)[3]
 • minimum2,000 m3/s (71,000 cu ft/s)
 • maximum110,000 m3/s (3,900,000 cu ft/s)[4][5]
Discharge 
 • locationDatong hydrometric station, Anhui (Uppermost boundary of the ocean tide)
 • average(Period: 1980–2020)905.7 km3/a (28,700 m3/s)[6] 30,708 m3/s (1,084,400 cu ft/s) (2019–2020)[7]
Discharge 
 • locationWuhan (Hankou)
 • average(Period: 1980–2020)711.1 km3/a (22,530 m3/s)[6]
Discharge 
 • locationYichang (Three Gorges Dam)
 • average(Period: 1980–2020)428.7 km3/a (13,580 m3/s)[6]
Basin features
Tributaries 
 • left
Gan, Huangpu
Chang Jiang
Tibetan
འབྲི་ཆུ་

Yangtze or Yangzi (English:

third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows 6,300 km (3,915 mi) in a generally easterly direction to the East China Sea.[8] It is the fifth-largest primary river by discharge volume in the world. Its drainage basin comprises one-fifth of the land area of China, and is home to nearly one-third of the country's population.[9]

The Yangtze has played a major role in the

transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports, to create a new economic belt alongside the river.[12]

The Yangtze flows through a wide array of ecosystems and is habitat to several

Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
.

Etymology

Chinese

Cháng Jiāng (长江; 長江) or "Long River" is the official name for the Yangtze in

Dangqu River.[citation needed
]

In

Sanskrit root gáṅgā.[18]

Qing Empire

By the Han dynasty, Jiāng had come to mean any river in Chinese, and this river was distinguished as the "Great River" 大江 (Dàjiāng). The epithet 長 (simplified version 长), meaning "long", was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period.[citation needed]

Various sections of the Yangtze have local names. From Yibin to

local name to the whole river.[14] The dividing site between upstream and midstream is considered to be at Yichang and that between midstream and downstream at Hukou (Jiujiang).[20]

English

The river was called Quian (江) and Quianshui (江水) by

dialects which preserved forms of the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 江 as Kæwng.[16] By the mid-19th century, these romanizations had standardized as Kiang; Dajiang, e.g., was rendered as "Ta-Kiang." "Keeang-Koo,"[24] "Kyang Kew,"[25] "Kian-ku,"[26] and related names derived from mistaking the Chinese term for the mouth of the Yangtze (江口, p
 Jiāngkǒu) as the name of the river itself.

The name Blue River began to be applied in the 18th century,[22] apparently owing to a former name of the Dam Chu[28] or Min[30] and to analogy with the Yellow River,[31][32] but it was frequently explained in early English references as a 'translation' of Jiang,[33][34] Jiangkou,[24] or Yangzijiang.[35] Very common in 18th- and 19th-century sources, the name fell out of favor due to growing awareness of its lack of any connection to the river's Chinese names[36][37] and to the irony of its application to such a muddy waterway.[37][38]

Shandong and discharged into the ocean a mere few hundred kilometers from the mouth of the Yangtze.[36][26]
)

By 1800, English cartographers such as

Hanyu Pinyin was adopted by the PRC's First Congress
in 1958, but it was not widely employed in English outside mainland China prior to the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979; since that time, the spelling Yangzi has also been used.

Tibetan

The source and upper reaches of the Yangtze are located in

transliterated into Chinese: 直曲; pinyin
: Zhíqū).

Geography

A topographical map of China depicting the Yangtze's steady course and the former route of the Yellow River south of Shandong to the Huai mouth, after its stabilization by the Grand Eunuch Li Xing's public works following the 1494 flood

The river originates from several tributaries in the eastern part of the

Yushu Prefecture, Qinghai.[45] As the historical spiritual source of the Yangtze, the Geladandong source is still commonly referred to as the source of the Yangtze since the discovery of the Jari Hill source.[44]

These tributaries join and the river then runs eastward through Qinghai (Tsinghai), turning southward down a deep valley at the border of Sichuan (Szechwan) and Tibet to reach Yunnan. In the course of this valley, the river's elevation drops from above 5,000 m (16,000 ft) to less than 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Thus, over the first 2,600 km (1,600 mi) of its length, the river has fallen more than 5,200 m (17,000 ft).[46]

It enters the basin of Sichuan at

Mount Wushan bordering Chongqing and Hubei to create the famous Three Gorges. Eastward of the Three Gorges, Yichang is the first city on the Yangtze Plain
.

After entering Hubei province, the Yangtze receives water from a number of lakes. The largest of these lakes is

Han River, bringing water from its northern basin as far as Shaanxi
.

At the northern tip of Jiangxi province,

Lake Poyang, the biggest freshwater lake in China, merges into the river. The river then runs through Anhui and Jiangsu, receiving more water from innumerable smaller lakes and rivers, and finally reaches the East China Sea
at Shanghai.

Four of China's five main freshwater lakes contribute their waters to the Yangtze River. Traditionally, the upstream part of the Yangtze River refers to the section from Yibin to Yichang; the middle part refers to the section from Yichang to

Lake Poyang
meets the river; the downstream part is from Hukou to Shanghai.

The origin of the Yangtze River has been dated by some geologists to about 45 million years ago in the Eocene,[47] but this dating has been disputed.[48][49]

Image gallery

  • The glaciers of the Tanggula Mountains, the traditional source of the Yangtze River
    The glaciers of the Tanggula Mountains, the traditional source of the Yangtze River
  • The Tuotuo River, a headwater stream of the Yangtze River, known in Tibetan as Maqu, or the "Red River"
    The
    Tuotuo River
    , a headwater stream of the Yangtze River, known in Tibetan as Maqu, or the "Red River"
  • The first turn of the Yangtze at Shigu (石鼓) in Yunnan, where the river turns 180 degrees from southbound to northbound
    The first turn of the Yangtze at Shigu (石鼓) in Yunnan, where the river turns 180 degrees from southbound to northbound
  • Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan
    Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan
  • Narrowest point of the Tiger Leaping Gorge near Lijiang, downstream from Shigu
    Narrowest point of the
    Lijiang
    , downstream from Shigu
  • The Jinsha, "Golden Sands River", in Yunnan
    The Jinsha, "Golden Sands River", in Yunnan
  • Qutang Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
    Qutang Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
  • Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
    Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
  • Xiling Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
    Xiling Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
  • Three Gorges Dam in Hubei, the world's largest hydroelectric project
    Three Gorges Dam in Hubei, the world's largest hydroelectric project
  • Golden Island on the Yangtze near Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, as it was in the mid-19th century[50]
    Golden Island on the Yangtze near Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, as it was in the mid-19th century[50]

History

Geologic history

Although the mouth of the

Red River.[52]

Afternoon in the jagged mountains rising from the Yangtze River gorge

Early history

Further information:
Southward expansion of the Han Dynasty

The Yangtze River is important to the cultural origins of

barbarous
by the northerners.

The Central Yangtze valley was home to sophisticated Neolithic cultures.[57] Later it became the earliest part of the Yangtze valley to be integrated into the North Chinese cultural sphere. (Northern Chinese were active there since the Bronze Age).[58]

A map of the Warring States around 350 BC, showing the former coastline of the Yangtze delta

In the lower Yangtze, two

Chu.[60]

Whether native or nativizing, the Yangtze states held their own against the northern Chinese homeland: some lists credit them with three of the

Shu on the upper Yangtze in modern Sichuan
, giving them a strong base to attack Chu's settlements along the river.

The state of Qin conquered the central Yangtze region, previous heartland of Chu, in 278 BC, and incorporated the region into its expanding empire. Qin then used its connections along the Yangtze River the

vied with each other
for control of the north.

Since the

Warring States period) made agriculture very stable and productive, eventually exceeding even the Yellow River region. The Qin and Han empires were actively engaged in the agricultural colonization of the Yangtze lowlands, maintaining a system of dikes to protect farmland from seasonal floods.[61] By the Song dynasty, the area along the Yangtze had become among the wealthiest and most developed parts of the country, especially in the lower reaches of the river. Early in the Qing dynasty, the region called Jiangnan (that includes the southern part of Jiangsu, the northern part of Zhejiang, and the southeastern part of Anhui
) provided 1⁄3–1⁄2 of the nation's revenues.

The Yangtze has long been the backbone of China's inland water transportation system, which remained particularly important for almost two thousand years, until the construction of the national railway network during the 20th century. The

Lingqu Canal, connecting the upper Xiang River with the headwaters of the Guijiang, allowed a direct water connection from the Yangtze Basin to the Pearl River Delta.[62]

Historically, the Yangtze became the political boundary between north China and south China several times (see

Southern Song. Many battles took place along the river, the most famous being the Battle of Red Cliffs in 208 AD during the Three Kingdoms
period.

The Yangtze was the site of naval battles between the

Jin–Song wars. In the Battle of Caishi of 1161, the ships of the Jin emperor Wanyan Liang clashed with the Song fleet on the Yangtze. Song soldiers fired bombs of lime and sulfur using trebuchets at the Jurchen warships. The battle was a Song victory that halted the invasion by the Jin.[63][64] The Battle of Tangdao
was another Yangtze naval battle in the same year.

Politically,

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms periods. Only the Ming occupied most parts of China from their capital at Nanjing, though it later moved the capital to Beijing. The ROC capital was located in Nanjing
in the periods 1911–12, 1927–37, and 1945–49.

Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River, a Ming dynasty landscape painting

Age of steam

Main article:
China Station

The Jardine, the first steamship to sail the river, was built for

Foreign Secretary decided mainly on the "suggestions" of William Jardine to declare war on China. In mid-1840, a large fleet of warships appeared on the China coast, and with the first cannonball fired at a British ship, the Royal Saxon, the British started the first of the Opium Wars. Royal Navy warships destroyed numerous shore batteries and Chinese warships, laying waste to several coastal forts along the way. Eventually, they pushed their way up north close enough to threaten the Imperial Palace in Beijing itself.[65]

The China Navigation Company was an early shipping company founded in 1876 in London, initially to trade up the Yangtze River from their Shanghai base with passengers and cargo. Chinese coastal trade started shortly after, and in 1883 a regular service to Australia was initiated.[65]

Yangtze River steam boats filmed in 1937
USS Luzon

Navigation on the upper river

Yangtze in 1915
Cruise boats on Yangtze
A vehicle carrier on Yangtze
A container carrier on Yangtze

Steamers came late to the upper river, the section stretching from Yichang to Chongqing. Freshets from Himalayan snowmelt created treacherous seasonal currents. But summer was better navigationally and the

Butterfield and Swire and Standard Oil added their own steamers on the river between 1917 and 1919. Between 1918 and 1919, Sichuan warlord violence and escalating civil war put Sichuan Steam Navigational Company out of business.[69] Shutung was commandeered by warlords and Shuhun was brought down river to Shanghai for safekeeping.[70] In 1921, when Captain Plant died at sea while returning home to England, a Plant Memorial Fund was established to perpetuate Plant's name and contributions to Upper Yangtze navigation. The largest shipping companies in service, Butterfield & Swire, Jardine Matheson, Standard Oil, Mackenzie & Co., Asiatic Petroleum, Robert Dollar, China Merchants S.N. Co. and British-American Tobacco Co., contributed alongside international friends and Chinese pilots. In 1924, a 50-foot granite pyramidal obelisk was erected in Xintan, on the site of Captain Plant's home, in a Chinese community of pilots and junk owners. One face of the monument is inscribed in Chinese and another in English. Though recently relocated to higher ground ahead of the Three Gorges Dam, the monument still stands overlooking the Upper Yangtze River near Yichang, a rare collective tribute to a westerner in China.[71][72]

Standard Oil ran the tankers Mei Ping, Mei An and Mei Hsia, which were collectively destroyed on December 12, 1937, when Japanese warplanes bombed and sank the U.S.S. Panay. One of the Standard Oil captains who survived this attack had served on the Upper River for 14 years.[73]

Navy ships

The Imperial Japanese Navy armored cruiser Izumo in Shanghai in 1937. She sank riverboats on the Yangtze in 1941.
See also:
Yangtze Incident

Contemporary events

Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong took staged swims in the river in 1956 and 1966 at Wuhan in publicity stunts to demonstrate his health, also starting a swimming craze through party propaganda.[74][75]

In 2002, Danish adventurer and sailor Troels Kløvedal sailed up the Yangtze, from Shanghai to past the Three Gorges Dam, in the collectively owned "Nordkaperen" sailing ship. Kløvedal had spent 12 years preparing and gathering the required permissions, and with a crew of Danes, his family members, a Chinese interpreter and several local maritime pilots, he became the first foreigner since 1949 to navigate the Yangtze.[76] His months-long journey was documented both in his 2004 book "Kineserne syr med lang tråd" and the TV show "Kløvedal i Kina" by DR.[77]

In August 2019, Welsh adventurer Ash Dykes became the first person to complete the 4,000-mile (6,437 km) trek along the course of the river, walking for 352 days from its source to its mouth.[78]

Hydrology

Periodic floods

See also: List of deadliest floods

Tens of millions of people live in the floodplain of the Yangtze valley, an area that naturally floods every summer and is habitable only because it is protected by river dikes. The floods large enough to overflow the dikes have caused great distress to those who live and farm there. Floods of note include those of 1931, 1954, and 1998.

The 1931 Central China floods or the Central China floods of 1931 were a series of floods that are generally considered among the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded, and almost certainly the deadliest of the 20th century (when pandemics and famines are discounted). Estimates of the total death toll range from 145,000 to between 3.7 million and 4 million.[79][80] The Yangtze flooded again in 1935, causing great loss of life.

From June to September 1954, the

Yangtze River Floods
were a series of catastrophic floodings that occurred mostly in Hubei Province. Due to unusually high volume of precipitation as well as an extraordinarily long rainy season in the middle stretch of the Yangtze River late in the spring of 1954, the river started to rise above its usual level in around late June. Despite efforts to open three important flood gates to alleviate the rising water by diverting it, the flood level continued to rise until it hit the historic high of 44.67 m in Jingzhou, Hubei and 29.73 m in Wuhan. The number of dead from this flood was estimated at 33,000, including those who died of plague in the aftermath of the disaster.

The

1998 Yangtze River floods were a series of major floods that lasted from middle of June to the beginning of September 1998 along the Yangtze.[81]
In the summer of 1998, China experienced massive flooding of parts of the
Yangtze River, resulting in 3,704 dead, 15 million homeless and $26 billion in economic loss.[82] Other sources report a total loss of 4150 people, and 180 million people were affected.[83] A staggering 25 million acres (100,000 km2) were evacuated, 13.3 million houses were damaged or destroyed. The floods caused $26 billion in damages.[83]

The 2016 China floods caused US$22 billion in damages.

In 2020, the Yangtze river saw the heaviest rainfall since 1961, with a 79% increase in June and July compared to the average for the period over the previous 41 years. A new theory suggested that abrupt reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, caused by shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, was a key cause of the intense downpours. Over the past decades rainfall had decreased due to increase of aerosols in the atmosphere, and lower greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 caused the opposite effect – a major increase in rain. Such a dramatic reduction of aerosols caused a dramatic change in the various components of the climate system, but such sudden change of the climate system would be very different from changes in response to continuous but gradual policy-driven emissions reductions.[84]

Degradation of the river

See also:
Water resources in China § Water quality
Barges on the river

Beginning in the 1950s, dams and dikes were built for flood control, land reclamation, irrigation, and control of diseases vectors such as

Yangtze alligator. These animals numbers went into freefall from the combined effects of accidental catches during fishing, river traffic, habitat loss and pollution. In 2006 the baiji dolphin became extinct; the world lost an entire genus.[89]

In 2020, a sweeping law was passed by the Chinese government to protect the ecology of the river. The new laws include strengthening ecological protection rules for hydropower projects along the river, banning chemical plants within 1 kilometer of the river, relocating polluting industries, severely restricting sand mining as well as a complete fishing ban on all the natural waterways of the river, including all its major tributaries and lakes.[90]

Contribution to ocean pollution

The Yangtze River produces more ocean plastic pollution than any other, according to The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch environmental research foundation that focuses on ocean pollution. 10 Rivers transport 90% of all the plastic that reaches the oceans, the Yangtze river being the biggest polluter by far.[91][92]

Reconnecting lakes

In 2002 a pilot program was initiated to reconnect lakes to the Yangtze with the objective to increase biodiversity and to alleviate flooding. The first lakes to be reconnected in 2004 were

Honghu Lake, and Tian'e-Zhou in Hubei on the middle Yangtze. In 2005 Baidang Lake in Anhui was also reconnected.[87]

Reconnecting the lakes improved water quality and fish were able to migrate from the river into the lake, replenishing their numbers and genetic stock. The trial also showed that reconnecting the lake reduced flooding. The new approach also benefitted the farmers economically. Pond farmers switched to natural fish feed, which helped them breed better-quality fish that can be sold for more, increasing their income by 30%. Based on the successful pilot project, other provincial governments emulated the experience and also reestablished connections to lakes that had previously been cut off from the river. In 2005 a Yangtze Forum has been established bringing together 13 riparian provincial governments to manage the river from source to sea.[93] In 2006 China's Ministry of Agriculture made it a national policy to reconnect the Yangtze River with its lakes. As of 2010, provincial governments in five provinces and Shanghai set up a network of 40 effective protected areas, covering 16,500 km2 (6,400 sq mi). As a result, populations of 47 threatened species increased, including the critically endangered Yangtze alligator. In the Shanghai area, reestablished wetlands now protect drinking water sources for the city. It is envisaged to extend the network throughout the entire Yangtze to eventually cover 102 areas and 185,000 km2 (71,000 sq mi). The mayor of Wuhan announced that six huge, stagnating urban lakes including the East Lake (Wuhan) would be reconnected at the cost of US$2.3 billion creating China's largest urban wetland landscape.[85][94]

Major cities along the river

See also: Category:Populated places on the Yangtze River
Map of the Yangtze river (facing west) showing the major settlements along its banks

Crossings

Main articles: Bridges and tunnels across the Yangtze River and Yangtze River power line crossings
Map all coordinates in "Yangtze River bridges and tunnels" using OpenStreetMap

Download coordinates as:

Until 1957, there were no bridges across the Yangtze River from Yibin to Shanghai. For millennia, travelers crossed the river by ferry. On occasions, the crossing may have been dangerous, as evidenced by the Zhong'anlun disaster (October 15, 1945).

The river stood as a major geographic barrier dividing northern and southern China. In the first half of the 20th century, rail passengers from Beijing to Guangzhou and Shanghai had to disembark, respectively, at

Nanjing West
.

After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Soviet engineers assisted in the design and construction of the

Sino-Soviet Split and did not receive foreign assistance. Road-rail bridges were then built in Zhicheng
(1971) and Chongqing (1980).

Bridge-building slowed in the 1980s before resuming in the 1990s and accelerating in the first decade of the 21st century. The

Sutong Bridge
(1,088 m, opened 2008). The rapid pace of bridge construction has continued. The city of Wuhan now has six bridges and one tunnel across the Yangtze.

A number of power line crossings have also been built across the river.

Dams

The Three Gorges Dam in 2006
Diagram showing dams planned for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River

As of 2007, there are two dams built on the Yangtze river: Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam. The Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station in the world by installed capacity, at 22.5 GW. Several dams are operating or are being constructed on the upper portion of the river, the Jinsha River. Among them, the Baihetan Dam is the second largest after the Three Gorges Dam, and the Xiluodu Dam is the 4th largest power station in the world.

Tributaries

A shipyard on the banks of the Yangtze building commercial river freight boats

The Yangtze River has over 700 tributaries. The major tributaries (listed from upstream to downstream) with the locations of where they join the Yangtze are:

The Huai River flowed into the Yellow Sea until the 20th century, but now primarily discharges into the Yangtze.

Protected areas

  • Sanjiangyuan ("Three Rivers' Sources") National Nature Reserve
    in Qinghai
  • Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan

Wildlife

The Yangtze River has a high species richness, including many endemics. A high percentage of these are seriously threatened by human activities.[95]

Fish

The two sturgeon species in the Yangtze (here Chinese sturgeon) are both seriously threatened.

As of 2011, 416 fish species are known from the Yangtze

Siluriformes (40 species, including 20 endemics), Perciformes (50 species, including 4 endemics), Tetraodontiformes (12 species, including 1 endemic) and Osmeriformes (8 species, including 1 endemic). No other order has more than four species in the river and one endemic.[95]

Many Yangtze fish species have declined drastically and 65 were recognized as

hydroacoustic signals.[102] The last definite record was an individual that was accidentally captured near Yibin in 2003 and released after having been radio tagged.[97] The Chinese sturgeon is the largest fish in the river and among the largest freshwater fish in the world, reaching a length of 5 m (16 ft); the extinct Chinese paddlefish reputedly reached as much as 7 m (23 ft), but its maximum size is labeled with considerable uncertainty.[103][104][105]

The silver carp is native to the river, but has (like other Asian carp) been spread through large parts of the world with aquaculture.

The largest threats to the Yangtze native fish are

Chinese high fin banded shark population into two[109] and causing the extirpation of the Yangtze population of the Japanese eel.[110] In an attempt of minimizing the effect of the dams, the Three Gorges Dam has released water to mimic the (pre-dam) natural flooding and trigger the breeding of carp species downstream.[111] In addition to dams already built in the Yangtze basin, several large dams are planned and these may present further problems for the native fauna.[111]

While many fish species native to the Yangtze are seriously threatened, others have become important in

Chinese perch, Takifugu pufferfish (mainly in the lowermost sections) and predatory carp.[95]

Other animals

The critically endangered Chinese alligator is one of the smallest crocodilians, reaching a maximum length of about 2 m (7 ft).[112]

Due to commercial use of the river, tourism, and pollution, the Yangtze is home to several seriously threatened species of large animals (in addition to fish): the

functionally extinct after an extensive search of the river revealed no signs of the dolphin's inhabitance.[113] In 2007, a large, white animal was sighted and photographed in the lower Yangtze and was tentatively presumed to be a baiji.[114] However, as there have been no confirmed sightings since 2004, the baiji is presumed to be functionally extinct at this time.[115] "Baijis were the last surviving species of a large lineage dating back seventy million years and one of only six species of freshwater dolphins." It has been argued that the extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin was a result of the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, a project that has affected many species of animals and plant life found only in the gorges area.[116]

Numerous species of land mammals are found in the Yangtze valley, but most of these are not directly associated with the river. Three exceptions are the semi-aquatic Eurasian otter, water deer and Père David's deer.[117]

The entirely aquatic Chinese giant salamander is the world's largest amphibian, reaching up to 1.8 m (5.9 ft) in length.[118]

In addition to the very large and exceptionally rare Yangtze giant softshell turtle, several smaller turtle species are found in the Yangtze basin, its

delta and valleys. These include the Chinese box turtle, yellow-headed box turtle, Pan's box turtle, Yunnan box turtle, yellow pond turtle, Chinese pond turtle, Chinese stripe-necked turtle and Chinese softshell turtle, which all are considered threatened.[119]

More than 160

least concern by the IUCN.[122][123][124]

The Chinese mitten crab is a commercially important species in the Yangtze,[125] but invasive in other parts of the world.[126]

The Yangtze basin contains a large number of freshwater crab species, including several endemics.[127] A particularly rich genus in the river basin is the potamid Sinopotamon.[128] The Chinese mitten crab is catadromous (migrates between fresh and saltwater) and it has been recorded up to 1,400 km (870 mi) up the Yangtze, which is the largest river in its native range.[126] It is a commercially important species in its native range where it is farmed,[125] but the Chinese mitten crab has also been spread to Europe and North America where considered invasive.[126]

The freshwater jellyfish Craspedacusta sowerbii, now an invasive species in large parts of the world, originates from the Yangtze.[129]

Tourism

The Yangtze River cruise, also called the "Three Gorges cruise", is a popular tourist attraction.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The Chinese name is simplified Chinese: 长江; traditional Chinese: 長江; pinyin: Cháng Jiāng; lit. 'long river' – see § Etymology.

References

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  2. S2CID 122626377
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  3. ^ "Main Rivers". National Conditions. China.org.cn. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
  4. ^ https://probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/flood-types-yangtze-river Archived July 23, 2011, at the Wayback Machine Accessed February 1, 2011
  5. ^ "Three Gorges Says Yangtze River Flow Surpasses 1998". Bloomberg Businessweek. July 20, 2010. Archived from the original on July 23, 2010. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
  6. ^
    doi:10.3389/fmars.2023.1201533
    .
  7. doi:10.3389/feart.2021.723123
    .
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Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yangtze River.
Look up Yangtze in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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