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The river that DID run red: Residents of Chinese city left baffled after Yangtze turns scarlet.
Topic Started: 9 Sep 2012, 07:42 PM (165 Views)
Audi-Tek
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The river that DID run red: Residents of Chinese city left baffled after Yangtze turns scarlet.

It is the last thing the residents of Chongqing would have expected to see.

But the Yangtze river, which runs through the city in south-western China, turned a bright shade of orange-red yesterday.

The waterway where the Yangtze met the Jialin River provided a fascinating contrast as the red started to filter into the other river.


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Meeting point: A ship sails across the junction of the polluted Yangtze River (left) and the Jialin River in Chongqing, China, yesterday

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Shock: The Yangtze river, which runs through the city in south-western China, turned a bright shade of orange-red yesterday

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Dirty/clean: A ship sails across the junction of the Yangtze River and the Jialin River at the exact spot where the dyed river starts to bleed into the Jialin

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2199800/The-river-DID-run-red-Residents-Chinese-city-left-baffled-Yangtze-turns-scarlet.html#ixzz2601u97tN

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Yangtze River Turns Red: Photos Of China's Once Golden, Now Scarlet Pathway


The Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world traditionally known as the "golden watercourse," mysteriously blushed for the first time on Sept. 6. Residents in the surrounding area near the city of Chongqing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River, literally stopped in their tracks when they noticed their once golden river had turned a shocking shade of red.

For photos of the once golden Yangtze River, check out the pictures in the photo gallery above. .... http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/382134/20120908/yangtze-river-turns-red-pictures-photos-chongqing.htm#page1

Nobody is quite sure what caused the color change, but residents carefully crept down to the riverbanks on Thursday and Friday to save some of the red river water in bottles, likely for posterity's sake. When they lifted their bottles from their water, Chinese citizens were surprised to find the water was completely opaque and had a similar orange-red appearance as tomato juice.

Even though the water doesn't look too safe, the new beet-red color of the river didn't stop people from going about their business. According to the Daily Mail, workers who rely on the Yangtze as their main source of income, including fishermen, continued about their daily work as if nothing were unusual. Officials are investigating the river's transformation, as nobody is quite sure what caused it.

The Yangtze River, Wikipedia explains, is key to the vitality of both China's economy and culture:

"The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of the PRC's GDP. The Yangtze River flows through a wide array of ecosystems and is itself habitat to several endemic and endangered species including the Chinese alligator and the Yangtze sturgeon. For thousands of years, people have used the river for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world."

Yangtze River Turns Red: How Did It Happen?

As officials investigate the Yangtze, early predictions from scientists say the red reaction was likely a result of pollution.

Emily Stanley, a limnologist (study of freshwater science) at the University of Wisconsin, said it's possible microorganisms could have caused the change in the river.

"When water turns red, the thing a lot of people think of first is red tide," Stanley told LiveScience. "But the algae that causes red tide is a marine group and not a freshwater group, so it's highly, highly unlikely that this is a red-tide-related phenomenon."

It wouldn't be surprising to believe pollution is the cause. According to Wikipedia, the Yangtze River "has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes," which have made flooding considerably worse, especially given the heavy rainfall in that region of China. Even though some sections of the Yangtze are currently protected as nature reserves, the Daily Mail noted that last December, the Jian River, which connects to the Yangtze, had turned red "after becoming polluted by a powerful dye." Reports say the dye was dumped into a storm drain in the city of Luoyang by two illegal dye workshops. The factories were eventually raided by officials and their machinery was disassembled.

The Yangtze's redness was most pronounced near Chongqing, but Chinese residents have also reported the red water at several other points. Officials still investigating the cause.

Source ................. Posted Image
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Why has the Yangtze River turned red?

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China's Yangtze River has taken on a russet hue.

ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images


A stretch of China’s mighty Yangtze River, near the city of Chongquing, has turned an alarming shade of red (International Business Times).

The cause of the colouring is still unclear. “One possible cause of the coloration may be suspended sediments, following heavy rains upstream”, says Hans Paerl, a marine and environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “This is common in large river systems like the Yangtze, and Southern China has had large rainfall events this summer,” he says.

Indeed, on 7 September the Chongqing Environmental Protection Agency noted on its website that a water quality monitor centre on the Yangtze had detected very high concentrations of silt in the river. The agency says that torrential rain in upper Sichuan province caused huge amount of silt to be washed into the Yantgze. It also says that the water does not contain hazardous or noxious substances.

Scientists interviewed by Nature say it is unlikely, although not impossible, that the colouring is due to an algal bloom. Sudden growths of algae, fed by fertilizer run-off (a process known as eutrophication), can sometimes produce blooms of brownish diatom algae in rivers, says Sergi Sabater, a limnologist at the Catalan Institute of Water Research in Spain, who carries out research into river ecology. So-called ‘red tides’ of algae are sometimes observed in warm, shallow, and nutrient-rich seas. But in this case, “if it is an eutrophication event, then it is enormous”, says John Dearing, a limnologist at the University of Southampton, UK, who has done research into the eutrophication of lakes on the lower Yangtze.

Dearing also notes that in December 2011, the Jian River in northern China turned red after dye pollution leaked into the river from a factory. “Cases of dye pollution are very, very common in China,” he says.

The 1.8 million square kilometre Yangtze basin constitutes 18.8% of China’s land area and accounts for 36.5% of China’s total fresh water availability, according to the Changjiang Water Resources Commission (CWRC), the river basin authority.

According to a 2007 WWF report, it is among the world’s top ten rivers at risk of serious pollution. In May 2011, China’s state council admitted that the river ecosystem could potentially be harmed by the Three Gorges Dam, located in the Hubei province, downstream of Chongquing (New York Times).


Source ............. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/09/why-has-the-yangtze-river-turned-red.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Frss%2Fnewsblog+%28News+Blog+-+Blog+Posts%29
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