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The "Three Northern Districts" extend for 14,000 kilometers from east to west through the northwest, the north and the northeast regions, playing an important role in preventing desert expansion and washing-away of the yellow soil highlands. China has a total of more than 18,000 kilometers of coastline, with rich tideland resources, as well as many sandy lands, mountains, and hills. The Government also plans to establish coastal protective forest systems in those areas to reduce the loss caused by typhoons and prevent inundation of coastal farmlands and washing-away of soil from the coastal hills. The protective-forest system scheme for farmlands in plains has already involved 600 counties, or more than 40 million hectares of farmlands.

 

3. Freshwater Resources and Agricultural Irrigation

 

The total amount of water resources available for development in China is 2.8 trillion cubic meters (2,800 cubic kilometers), mainly consisting of surface water, groundwater, and glacial water. The total amount of surface water resources is over 2.71 trillion cubic meters (2,710 cubic kilometers), making 5.7% of the world total river flow. The groundwater and the total amount of water contained in the glaciers account for 825.2 billion cubic meters and 5 trillion cubic meters (5,000 cubic kilometers) respectively. These upstream sources together supply 55 billion cubic meters of water every year to major Asian rivers including the Changjiang, the Huang He (Yellow River), the Yarlung Zangbo, the Indus, and the Ganges.

As the geographical distribution of China's water resources is not well balanced, rainfalls and river flows diminishing gradually from the southeast to the northwest.

The time distribution of the resources is also unbalanced. This means that the distribution over a year shows imbalance and wide fluctuation. The seasonal distribution is such that the rivers in the southern provinces rise in the four months from May to August with 50 to 60% of annual rainfall, whereas those in the north rise in the four months from June to September with 70 to 80% of the annual rainfall.

 

 

 

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