Land subsidence has appeared in 16 Chinese provincial areas due
to the excessive exploitation of underground water and over half of
geological disasters are caused by human activities, an official
with the Ministry of Land Resources said on Wednesday.
Jiang Jianjun, director of the geological environment department
of the ministry, said that land subsidence appeared most severely
in China's plain and delta regions such as the Yangtze River Delta
region, Pearl River Delta region and North China Plain.
Provinces including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hebei, and
municipalities of Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin are suffering from
land subsidence.
The foremost reason is the lowering of underground water level
due to excessive exploitation of underground water. Geological
movement of the earth and too many skyscrapers also contributed to
land subsidence, Jiang noted.
Human activities such as railway, road, building construction
activities, are having greater influence on land conditions and
increasing the chances of geological disasters, he said.
Jiang said road or railway tunnels in hills or mountains weaken
the stability of the hills and mountains, irrational mining and
random stack of mining wastes and tailings in mountainous areas may
lead to bigger possibility of mud-rock flow in cases of cloudbursts
and torrential floods.
He urged that professional evaluation on the geological impact
of large and key projects be conducted so as to prevent
human-resulted geological disasters.
Statistics showed that in first half of this year, there were
2690 geological disasters in China, with 199 people dead or
missing. Direct economic losses topped 600 million yuan (US$79.365
million).
(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2007)