Author(s): Y. Zhai; G. H. Ni
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: River health; Assessment; River health index; Yellow River
Abstract: Today one of the main objectives of river management is to maintain and improve the river health while keeping economy growing rapidly. It is significant to study the river health's concept and methods to assess it, which will be used as a tool of river management. In the past, the evaluation of the river health mainly focused on the qualitative analysis of the river health status using comprehensive assessment methods. Following the principles that the method should be representative and easy to operate, this study started with the five characteristics of the river health, to determine the dominant factors. A formula to calculate the river health index was concluded, and the criteria to classify rivers health conditions were then set up. The proposed method to obtain river health index was applied to the downstream of the Yellow River, the evaluation results of the river health condition showed good accordance with field observations, and the good aspects of the method, i.e., being practical and easy to operate, relatively few data requirement, were demonstrated.
Year: 2011