Editing Yellow River (section)

=== Dynamics ===
{{see also|Yellow River flood (disambiguation){{!}}Yellow River floods}}

The river has long been critical to the development of northern China, and is regarded by scholars as a [[cradle of civilization]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Little |first=Archibald John |title=The Far East |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1905 |isbn=978-1-108-01387-1 |page=53}}</ref> Flooding of the river has also caused much destruction, including multiple floods that have resulted in the deaths of over one million people. Among the deadliest were the [[1344 Yellow River flood|1344 Yellow River Flood]], during the [[Yuan dynasty]], the [[1887 Yellow River flood|1887 flood]] during the [[Qing dynasty]] which killed anywhere from 900,000 to 2 million people, and a [[Republic of China era]] 1931 flood (part of [[1931 China floods|a massive number of floods that year]]) that killed 1–4 million people.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Great Big Book of Horrible Things|last=White|first=Matthew|author-link=Matthew White (atrocitologist)|publisher=[[W. W. Norton]]|year=2012|page=47|isbn=9780393081923|title-link=The Great Big Book of Horrible Things}}</ref>

The cause of the floods is the large amount of [[fine-grained]] [[loess]] carried by the river from the [[Loess Plateau]], which is continuously deposited along the bottom of its channel. The sedimentation causes natural dams to slowly accumulate. These subaqueous dams are unpredictable and generally undetectable. Eventually, the enormous amount of water needs to find a new way to the sea, forcing it to take the [[path of least resistance]]. When this happens, it bursts out across the flat [[North China Plain]], sometimes taking a new channel and inundating most farmland, cities or towns in its path.

The traditional Chinese response of building higher and higher [[levee]]s along the banks sometimes also contributed to the severity of the floods: When flood water did break through the levees, it could no longer drain back into the river bed as it would after a normal flood, as the river bed was sometimes now higher than the surrounding countryside. These changes could cause the river's mouth to shift as much as {{convert|480|km|-1|sp=us|abbr=on}}, sometimes reaching the ocean to the north of the [[Shandong Peninsula]] and sometimes to the south.<ref name="Gascoigne">Gascoigne, Bamber and Gascoigne, Christina (2003) ''The Dynasties of China'', Perseus Books Group, {{ISBN|0786712198}}</ref>

Another historical source of devastating floods is the collapse of upstream [[Ice jam|ice dam]]s in [[Inner Mongolia]] with an accompanying sudden release of vast quantities of impounded water. There have been 11 such major floods in the past century, each causing tremendous loss of life and property. Nowadays, explosives dropped from aircraft are used to break the ice dams before they become dangerous.<ref>[http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htpeace/articles/20110329.aspx The Ice Bombers Move Against Mongolia]. strategypage.com (29 March 2011)</ref>

Before modern [[dam]]s appeared in China, the Yellow River used to be extremely prone to flooding. In the 2,540 years from 595 BC to 1946 AD, the Yellow River has been reckoned to have flooded 1,593 times, shifting its course 26 times noticeably and nine times severely.<ref name="Treg">Tregear, T. R. (1965) ''A Geography of China'', pp. 218–219.</ref> These floods include some of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded. Before modern disaster management, when floods occurred, some of the population might initially die from drowning and many more would suffer later from the ensuing famine and spread of diseases.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/ems/flood_cds/en/index.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041231191845/http://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/ems/flood_cds/en/index.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=31 December 2004|title=Flooding and communicable diseases fact sheet|publisher=World Health Organization|page=2|access-date=27 July 2011}}</ref>