Water is a basic need for life and health, and although 71% of the earth is covered by water, freshwater resources are extremely limited. Of the total water resources, 97.47% is unboolable salt water. Of the remaining 2.53 percent of freshwater, 87 percent is ice and snow from polar ice sheets, alpine glaciers, and permafrost that are difficult for humans to use. What humans can really use is the rivers, lakes and parts of the groundwater, which account for only 0.26% of the earth's total water, and are unevenly distributed. As a result, more than 1.4 billion children, women and men around the world do not have access to adequate and safe water to sustain their basic needs. At many levels, water and health are inextricably linked. Every decision we make is in fact related to water and the impact it has on health.
My country is a country with severe drought and water shortages. China's total freshwater resources are 2,800 billion cubic meters, accounting for 6% of the world's water resources, second only to Brazil, Russia and Canada, ranking fourth in the world. However, China's per capita water resources are only 2300 cubic meters, only 1/4 of the world average, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. However, China is also the country that uses the most water in the world. In 2002 alone, the country's freshwater withdrawals reached 549.7 billion cubic meters, accounting for about 13% of the world's annual withdrawals, about 1.2 times the 470 billion cubic meters of freshwater supply of the United States in 1995.
In fact, the world's most abundant water resources, to our good friend, good neighbor Russia, because Russia straddles the Eurasian continent, the area is the world's first, water storage is currently the world's relatively large, per capita ownership is the largest. One of them is to talk about the world's largest lake with freshwater reserves - Lake Baikal!
Lake Baikal is located in the southern part of Eastern Siberia, in the republic of Buryatia and the territory of the Irkutsk Oblast, between latitude 51 ° 29 ' ~ 55 ° 46 ' north latitude, longitude 103 ° 41 ′ ~ 109 ° 57 ', the total volume of the lake is 23.6 trillion cubic meters (2015), the deepest depth of 1637 meters (2015), is the world's first deep lake, the largest freshwater lake in Eurasia. The lake is 636 km long, with an average width of 48 km and an area of 31,500 km2, formed by stratigraphic faults and falls, with an altitude of 455 m above sea level and an average water depth of 730 m.
Lake Baikal, known as the North Sea in ancient China, is known as the "Pearl of Siberia", and UNESCO registered Lake Baikal as a World Natural Heritage Site in 1996. Lake Baikal is infused with 336 large and small rivers, including the Selenge River, with a catchment area of 557,000 square kilometers. The Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei River, flows out of the lake, and there are 27 small islands in the lake, which are not covered by Quaternary glaciers, and the lake still retains tertiary freshwater animals, famous for Baikal seals, concave white salmon, Omur fish, sharks and so on. The lake is an important fishing ground in Siberia and has a great influence on the climate of the region.
Like the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, the Baikal Rift Valley is one of the world's most famous tension rift areas in terms of regional geological formation, located in the northern part of the inner deformation zone of Central Asia, and is the largest active continental rift valley in Eurasia. Along the S-shaped Paleozoic suture belt, the Rift Valley of Lake Baikal stretches for more than 2,000 kilometers. The Baikal region is a rift between the Eurasian and Amur plates, and as the two plates continue to separate, Lake Baikal continues to expand. The Baikal region is also an earthquake-prone area, with an average of 2,000 large and small earthquakes per year.
Just like some of the city lakes in China that we have seen, take The Tangxun Lake in Wuhan City, generally the more close to the center of the lake, the better the water quality, this is because it has its own "purification function", beautiful natural scenery, clean lake water, and strong self-purification ability of the lake. The annual output value of aquatic products is 10.27 million yuan. The area is well connected and has excellent infrastructure. The land area available for development is 460 mu, and according to the plan, the green coverage rate will reach 85%. Not only Tangxun Lake, Hangzhou's Qiandao Lake is also because of its self-purification function and has become a source of high-quality drinking water, Qiandao Lake water in China's large rivers and lakes ranked first in the high-quality water, for the national first-class water body, known as "the world's first beautiful water".
Lake Baikal is a nutrient-poor lake, the content of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients in the water is low, and the total amount of phytoplankton such as algae is relatively small. The lake alternates with the seasons, and the water body in the lake basin will have two large cycles in a year, which is a double circulation lake. In such lakes, the oxygen content and quality of the lake water vary little with depth. Lake Baikal also has a strong "self-purification function", mainly related to the environment around the lake, because Russia is a sparsely populated country, especially in the Siberian region, sparsely populated, less pollutants discharged from life and production, so the water flowing into the lake is relatively clean, so Lake Baikal has relatively high-quality fresh water resources! Not only that, Russia has also introduced a lot of measures to protect the environment of Lake Baikal, set up protected areas and national parks, and even a Chinese water company has terminated its cooperation due to ecological damage!
For Lake Baikal, our impression is relatively unfamiliar, because when it belongs to the Chinese territory, it dates back to the Kangxi period, and I will not talk about the specific reasons one by one, as long as you know this history.
Our main thing is to popularize the problem of water resources in Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is 636 km long, with an average width of 48 km, a maximum width of 79.4 km, an area of 31,500 km2, an average depth of 744 m, a deepest point of 1,637 m, a lake surface of 456 m above sea level, a crescent shape, and a total water storage capacity of 23.6 trillion cubic meters. For the water storage capacity of 23.6 trillion cubic meters, it should surprise many small partners, how big a concept is this?
Take the Yangtze River as a reference, the Yangtze River is the richest river in China, with a total water resource of 961.6 billion cubic meters, accounting for about 36% of the total river runoff in the country, 20 times that of the Yellow River. It ranks third in the world after the Amazon and Congo rivers (Zaire Rivers) in the equatorial rainforest belt. This amount is only 1/25 of Lake Baikal, and it is colloquially known that 25 Yangtze Rivers can fill Lake Baikal in a year!
It is precisely because China is a water-scarce country that the South-to-North Water Diversion Project mainly solves the problem of water shortage in the northern region of China, especially in the Huang-Huai-Hai Basin, with a population of 438 million people in the planning area. There are three water transfer lines on the eastern, central and western lines, and through the three water transfer lines, they are connected with the four major rivers of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Huai River and the Haihe River, constituting the overall layout with "four horizontal and three vertical" as the main body, so as to help realize the rational allocation pattern of China's water resources from the north to the south and the mutual benefit of the east and the west.
Can water be transferred from Lake Baikal to North China?
First of all, the span is too large, just because the water is transferred to North China, it is still unnecessary, because China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project can play a certain role! Coupled with the fact that Mongolia is separated in the middle, it is even more difficult to operate!
Second, climate problems, because of the influence of siberian and Mongolian climate, early winter, colder weather, low temperature weather channel surface ice will also affect the amount of water transfer. Even if a pipeline is built, it will cause great losses due to the weather!
Therefore, here we would like to call on everyone to save water.