[00:00:00] Bridget Scanlon: Welcome to the Water Resources Podcast. I am Bridget Scanlon. In this podcast, we discuss water challenges with leading experts, including topics on extreme climate events, overexploitation, and potential solutions towards more sustainable management. Today, I am pleased to welcome my friend, Chunmiao Zheng, to the Water Resources Podcast.
Thank you so much Chunmiao for joining me today. Maybe you can describe a little bit about your recent positions because it's kind of hard to keep up with you.
[00:00:36] Chunmiao Zheng: Okay, thank you very much, Bridget. I'm very happy to be here. And I went to the University of Wisconsin Madison for my PhD quite a few years ago, and then I returned to China to take up a position at Peking University.
And then I moved to the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China to start a school of environmental science and engineering in 2015. And I'm still associated with that university, referred to as SUSTech. But since last year, I have been involved with the effort to start a new university, privately funded university, called the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.
I'm a chair professor and vice president of the new university in Ningbo, so it's been a long way since my Wisconsin days. Yeah, that's a really exciting journey. And also, my research interests mainly relate to groundwater and hydrogeology, and including, like, geohydrological process and groundwater pollution and remediation, and also how global change and emerging contaminants impacting water sustainability.
[00:01:59] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Thank you so much, Chunmiao. And the new university at Ningbo sounds very exciting. It has a science and technology focus. So it will sort of be like the MIT of China, I guess.
[00:02:13] Chunmiao Zheng: That's, yeah, that's the hope.
[00:02:13] Bridget Scanlon: That's a huge, endeavor. And of course, Chunmiao is an internationally recognized hydrogeologist and has won numerous awards and was selected as the Geological Society of America Birdsall Dreiss distinguished lecturer and also AGU, American Geophysical Union Fellow.
So really appreciate your taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk today. There's a lot of interest in water resources in China and also how it's responding to climate impacts and land use change and things like that. So today we'll cover those general topics about the spatial distribution of water. You have water scarcity in the in the north and water rich areas in the south, and then the response to floods and droughts that we hear about and how you manage those, and then solutions to the water issues, storing more water, transporting water from rich to poor areas, and the impacts of development on pollution and how you're managing that.
So we'll try to cover, do a sort of reconnaissance on many of those things. Before we talk about the details, it may be nice, Chunmiao, if you give us a little bit of background on China, the population and how it, and the area and things like that, and the distribution of water in the country.
[00:03:33] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, and China has a population of about 1.4 billion, similar to India, compared to more than 300 million in the U. S. Chinese population stopped growing, I think, the first time last year. I think, almost reaching a plateau. So this is quite an event, last year. A lot of people paying attention to, like, China population stopped growing after many years of rapid
growth. And China's total area is about 9. 6 million square kilometers, quite similar to Canada and the US. You talk about China as being a tale of two halves, very much so in terms of water resources. And then, now, if we divide the country by almost exactly two halves, North China and South China, for North China, the average annual precipitation is less than 200 millimeters, or equivalent to 8 inches, while for South China, it's greater than 1600 millimeter, which is about 64 inch.
So water resource per capita in the north versus south is 1 to 4. So you can see that's really, very, significant in terms of China.
You mentioned extreme events, and China has really experienced climatic and hydrologic extremes for sure. Just two weeks ago, I went to Xi'an, which is, western China. Normally, this time of year, the temperature should be quite mild, but when I was there, it's almost like, I think it's closer to 100 Fahrenheit, which is quite unusual. Also, Beijing, the capital, has experienced the hottest summer ever. I think similar to many other places, and with multiple days exceeding a hundred degrees.
So, also this temperature, but in terms of water extremes, hydrological extremes, North China is much better known for water scarcity and water shortage. I gave my talk about China's water crisis, water shortage in North China Plain. But flooding has become a lot more frequent. Just a couple weeks ago actually late July 2023, I think.
You might have heard the Beijing area encountered, I think, a one in a hundred year flooding event with over a dozen people died from it. So this has become a frequent occurrence. So you can really see that this intensified in terms of extreme events, extreme hydrologic responses.
[00:06:24] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I was reading, some insurance reports, AON said that in 2022 had mentioned that the economic losses from flooding in China totaled about $15 billion with the mortality of about 200 people and $8 billion from droughts.
Similar to many regions is trying to manage, it's very challenging for water resources managers to deal with these extremes. I think the World Bank, I remember them saying a couple of years ago, it's a case of “too much, too little, and too polluted”. So, but you were tackling some of these issues now in China.
You mentioned that at the Southern half and the Northern half, and I guess the divide is the division between the Yangtze river and the Yellow river, the, those basin boundaries. Yes. So even way back in the 50s, Mao Zedong was talking about trying to move water from the water rich south to the water poor north.
And so you guys have been doing that with the South to North Water Transfer Project. Maybe you can describe that a little bit, Chunmiao
[00:07:34] Chunmiao Zheng: yeah. So this is also related to the Three Gorges Project, right? It's related to, should point out the drought and flood has been a problem for a thousand years in China.
China really suffers from a lot of natural disasters from water, and too little, too much, and too polluted, really a good summary of all the challenges facing China. The Three Gorges Project, I think, actually for its first priority was to regulate flooding, try to prevent more flooding, to regulate water storage upstream, and also generate clean energy, hydropower, reduce CO2.
And then related to that project is the water transfer. You mentioned Mao Zedong started talking about back in 1950s. And so after many years of debate and discussion, it finally started transferring water more than 10 years ago. And the project was designed to transfer something like 45 billion cubic meters from the Yangtze River to North China by 2050.
So it's still a few more years to go. At the total cost of 60 billion U. S. dollars. So that's a lot of money. And the project has three routes. Eastern and Middle have been largely been completed and sending billions of cubic meters to North China. And so far, I think a lot of people, tens of millions of people have benefited from it.
It's really because of a lot of China's very significant water shortage. And then with this completion of the Middle and Eastern routes, and groundwater has been recovering, groundwater level, from years of over-pumping in North China Plain and right now depleted aquifers have been in recovery and, but there are also some problems.
For example, the eastern route needs, like a total of 65 meter lift from Yangtze River pump station. So a lot of energy is needed. And also the transfer canal goes through many population centers. So, you have to do a lot of engineering measures to prevent the pollution, polluted groundwater or surface water from infiltrating into a transfer canal.
And also, now with the groundwater level recovery in the North China Plain, there's potential for significant water quality change. So that's another something to worry about.
Now, with the most controversy is the western route, which is still under planning stage. It's much more difficult to build, to do with the western route, because the geologic condition is very difficult.
A lot of faults, fracture zones. And also biodiversity concerns, ecological conservation, and also much higher lift will be needed, like between 80 to 500 m from intake to final destination. So the western route faces a lot of difficulties still, but yeah, that's still in discussing.
[00:11:08] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, it's quite an engineering feat, isn't it?
And as you describe the South to North Water Transfer Project, you're describing the trade offs, moving water and providing water. One thing we could do is we could move the people. We rarely move people to where the water is, moving the water then and the energy required to move that. And so you mentioned the three routes, the Eastern, Central and Western.
So the eastern route, does that end in Tianjin, and how much water does it transfer, about one cubic kilometer per year, is that correct,
[00:11:42] Chunmiao Zheng: It's about total 45. So about 10 billion cubic meters for eastern. Right. So altogether eastern and middle routes, I think altogether close to like, 20 billion m3.
[00:11:55] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. and so for our listeners then, 1 billion cubic meters is the same as one cubic kilometer of water and is similar to 1 million acre feet, one. 1. 2 cubic kilometers = one million acre feet. So it's similar to million acre feet. So this is a lot of water. When you consider some of your graphics in your papers, you showed that from the 1950s to recent, the water, the use in China has gone from about a hundred cubic kilometers to about 500 cubic kilometers.
So this water transfer is a significant part of the total water use in China. So it helps a lot.
[00:12:34] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, if I'm correct, I think by like 2014, in the entire North China Plain, groundwater has been, the water table has been dropping like average like 0.4 meters a year. That's almost half meter, very significant, due to over-pumping
And then, since the transfer, water transfer, and also due to some other factors, for example, North China being a little bit wetter, more rainfall last couple of years. So the recovery had been almost half that amount, like 0. 2 or 0. 3 between, 0.23 m per year. So it's a fairly significant recovery.
[00:13:26] Bridget Scanlon: Right. So, so the North China Plain is the region around Beijing and Tianjin, very high population density, and then a lot of irrigated agriculture. And it seems like a way back several decades ago, they dammed up many of the rivers that were coming into the North China plain.
And then, so the irrigation then depends primarily on groundwater. And food security was a large goal for China for many years. And so they grow wheat and maize, so winter wheat when you have very little rainfall, and so you're relying on irrigation and summer maize, which is during the rainy season, and so that requires less irrigation.
So, this heavy dependence on groundwater for irrigation led to a lot of depletion, in addition to the large municipalities. So does the South to North water transfer, does that transfer water mostly go to the municipalities and then by reducing groundwater use for those municipalities, then the groundwater in the North China Plain aquifer has been recovering.
Is that correct? Or is it also helping with the irrigation?
[00:14:40] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, I think that the transfer of water mostly for cities, for example, Beijing city, for domestic use, and that in turn reduces the need for pumping groundwater for domestic use, and so it helped groundwater recovery. But mostly transfer of water is for domestic use, for drinking water, if excessive, over surplus will be discharged to aquifers.
[00:15:09] Bridget Scanlon: So, so that has been a huge help. So maybe your 2009 Birdsall Dreiss lecture where the title was, Will China Run out of Water? So it has been trying to manage these issues then by storing more water to alleviate floods, but also that water can be used during drought periods. So the Three Gorges, I think that is about 39 cubic kilometers of water storage capacity in the Three Gorges. And so if you can store that from the wet periods and then use it more for the dry periods, that can help adapt to these climate extremes also. Yes. And then, storing water and transporting water, these are all different engineering solutions to try to manage water resources.
Irrigation globally is the elephant in the room in terms of water use. And so also in China, in the North China Plain irrigated agriculture, but you've been working with some colleagues, Professor Kinzelbach and others trying to manage irrigation water use in the North China Plain and make it more efficient.
And also with that is the fertilizer applications. So that has helped increase productivity. But maybe you can describe a little bit about the work that Professor Kinzelbach has been discussing recently. Yeah.
[00:16:30] Chunmiao Zheng: So I know you've done a great deal of research on irrigation. So part of the problem for North China Plain is it's also very important for food production.
Also a food basket, so called, for China. So a lot of water, over 60% in North China Plain is used for irrigation. At the same time we talk about water security, food security is very important too. Actually China’s cultivated land is only about 9% of the total in the world, while the water resource about 7% of the world.
But the population, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's almost like one fifth, like 18% or something. So as you can see, it's really hard to produce enough food to feed such a large population. So China now solving somewhat, a water shortage problem, by importing more foods. Actually, the latest statistic is that 1 million pounds of food products imported, I think last year, mainly soybeans.
And to produce that amount of water, actually, that amount of food - 100 billion cubic meter of water will be needed to produce that imported food. But China does not have that much water. So this is really good illustration of food - water nexus that you studied so much.
Now come back to North China Plain. In North China Plain, groundwater level has recovered somewhat. In addition to that water transfer from the south, another thing is also the reduction in the food production in North China Plain due to imported food. Also increase in the irrigation efficiency. It's quite important for water saving or water conservation.
And Professor Kinzelbach from ETH, I've known Professor Kinzelbach for many years, as I have known you many years, and he has done some wonderful things to promote ground water sustainability, using North China as a big goal. In North China Plain, at the worst of this overdraft, over pumping, water table dropped like 50, 60 meter or even more below land surface.
Normally, before large-scale over-pumping started in early 1980s, water table was like two or three or four meter below land surface. So, very dramatic drop of water table. Actually, you can see from the satellite. And, Professor Kinzelbach’s team, supported by Swiss government and also assisted by Chinese Ministry of Water Resources conduct a very comprehensive project to test and implement groundwater management water saving policy.
And so they use a lot of sensors. And also, sometimes hard to get the data like pumping rates, farmers won't tell you. So they use, electric, electricity consumption and relate that to pumping is a very good idea. And then they develop the cutting edge groundwater models. And then, based on how much you pump and how ground water system will respond, and then designed decision support system to tell farmers, when to irrigate, when, what type of crop may be better for them or use less water and depending on how much water they have, and also water price.
That would allow the farmers to decide whether it’s safe or be more beneficial to go for another crop. So, that the whole system, I think, it's quite innovative and useful and definitely going to help moving this more effective water management forward.
[00:20:20] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, I think it's really, yeah, very important to, to work directly with the farmers who are the stakeholders and help them understand the resource and the dynamics of the resource. So these approaches that Professor Kinzelbach has promoted and developed working with them and translating the results from the detailed groundwater modeling to decision support, that is really incredible and, really helps develop more sustainable management. So, so you mentioned maybe China has relaxed a little bit on its providing food security by production in China alone, and then is importing more food from other countries.
I was looking last year, maybe importing from Brazil, 30 billion, 33 billion, the U. S. 25 billion dollars, and Thailand 10 billion, and Australia 7 billion. So a lot of food imports then, and you just mentioned mostly soybean. And so that's, that helps, but I'm wondering with the economic development in China, you're now considered to upper middle income country, and changing diets, if the imports is really getting you ahead of the game, or you're just keeping pace with the increased water footprint for the changing diets with maybe more Western type diets or things like that. So it's really hard to get ahead when human behavior changes in response to economic development. Yeah,
[00:21:51] Chunmiao Zheng: That's very true. I think, it's a very good point that meat consumption has really been going up in China as people get wealthier and income increased.
So that, yeah, how are we going to keep pace with that? I'm not so sure. But on another thing, we could also rely on a shift to, like, artificial meat. Actually, my research team is just submitting a paper on how that will actually improve, or contribute to, water sustainability by shifting from real meat to human made meat.
[00:22:25] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And some people, I can remember some people from the British Geological Survey, a woman that had, stage four cancer, and she was wondering why the Chinese had maybe... A decade or so ago, had little cancer and she attributed it to dairy free diets. And so she was promoting that and she wrote some books on that for trying to prevent or deal with the cancer issue.
So it's all very interesting. So one of the things that's maybe a little bit different about China versus other countries is that you have an opportunity to do more top down management. But maybe you can describe the water governance a little bit and how that is distributed among the different ministries and how you really would like to see more coordination to improve that.
[00:23:14] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, I think you touch upon a very important issue about the governance of water resources, whenever people discuss the water issue in China, this topic will come up, the so called nine dragon rule of the waters, right? You heard it in Chinese, it's equivalent to the English saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. So that being said, that's indeed a very big problem and you and I could be talking about it for a long time. But I can say there has been some improvement in coordination. For example, the function of groundwater pollution control has been moved to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment since the ministry was reorganized back in 2018.
In the past, it was in the jurisdiction of other ministries like Ministry of Natural Resources. So that has actually helped I just gave a talk on groundwater pollution control at a conference organized by Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Another example is a release in November 2021, signed by the former premier, the regulation on groundwater management,
about which I published a letter to the Editor of Science. The regulation actually was created to address the groundwater related issues more comprehensively. Explicit and clear division of responsibilities and jurisdictions for different government agencies will help the coordination.
So that regulation, I think it's a very significant one. And that's why I wrote this letter to Science ("Plans to protect China’s depleted groundwater”). Things are moving in the right direction, but still, it's a complicated situation now.
[00:25:18] Bridget Scanlon:. Well, I mean, we have the same issues in the U. S. and I think in many regions.
Surface water is regulated separately from groundwater oftentimes, and they sometimes double count the water and they don't acknowledge the connection between the two. And so I think it's very important to consider these. So if you're developing a solution for one area that you're not nuking another area in the process and an unintended consequence.
So when we look at energy issues or food issues, we might improve the situation for those sectors, but we might be degrading water quality or quantity, those sorts of things. You've done a lot of work in the Heihe Basin, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, in Northwest China and looking at the water issues there and developing an integrated water resources modeling approach and considering stakeholders.
I really like the comprehensive approach that you bring to these things where you consider food production, ecosystems and surface water and groundwater connectivity. And this was heavily funded by the government. Can you describe a little bit in how you, whether you feel like they have met, they met the goals of the project or how it evolved.
[00:26:35] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, thank you Bridget for bringing this up. I was very fortunate to be involved in this project that I think one of the major things I did after I came back to China to work here. The National Natural Science Foundation of China would fund this type of large research programs for over eight years. So you actually can really do something over eight years.
And then any research group can apply to this program for funding. So I was part of the steering committee, to guide, and advise the program. And the program name is Integrated Ecological Hydrological Study of the Heihe River Basin. Heihe, in Chinese it means a black river, so Heihe. It's really a good example of the conflict between, like the human need for irrigation, and the natural conservation for vegetation and ecosystem. Heihe is just an example of numerous arid or semi arid inland river basins in northwest China.
And so this is quite typical, this inland river basin, so that all the water flow, most of the water resource being generated upstream from the high altitude mountain region with permafrost thawing and glacier melting. Actually, the water resource has been increasing upstream due to climate warming. Quite significant, you can see, from the melting of glacier and thawing of permafrost, and then the middle stream is very dry, but a lot of agriculture. It's a plain area. water from all upstream usually used, overused, and leaving very little for downstream. But downstream usually has a terminal lake, and then along the river corridor, water supports the important oasis ecosystem functioning.
So, this is the same story in China, many basins, inland river basins. For the downstream, significant desertification and drying up of terminal Lake. The Heihe River Basin was selected for this major study. And then to kind of advise the government how much water, environmental flow should be... allowed to go downstream for ecological conservation.
So in this major study, we had more than 100 projects, and then we did a lot of integrated modeling and observation. And one major conclusion is that it's possible to utilize the storage regulation function of particular aquifer in the middle stream. During the wet season, you try to use more surface water and use groundwater aquifer as a storage which operates like groundwater reservoir. And then during the dry season, you pump groundwater out. So in this way, you can preserve, you can save enough water for downstream. Our result helped the government managers to modify the existing water sharing compact agreement between middle stream and downstream communities.
So that was one important outcome for us. But the runoff still depends on local climate change. Because last few years have been relatively wet, so quite a lot of water, so there's no problem for saving enough water for downstream. And at the terminal lake, it's called Juyan Lake, has really plenty of water and the area with vegetation expanded quite a bit, quite significantly. But the last couple of years there seemed like a trend to go to a dry period again, so again the water had been reduced flowing to downstream.
Also there's another unforeseen consequence even in those wet years when plenty of water going to downstream. The purpose for downstream flow was to improve, to enhance the vegetation, to preserve the terminal lake, but the farmers would be happy to take the water to grow melons or other economic crops. So, that defeated the purpose of sending water downstream. So you have really complicated nature and human factors in this water management.
[00:31:15] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. So, I mean, this project really encompasses a lot of different issues. So this internally draining system with the terminal lake, endorheic basin, and then the water supply from the mountains and then the increased water supply related to melting glaciers and permafrost, and then how much water to allocate to human water use versus ecosystems.
That's a real challenge. And then dealing with wet and dry climate cycles. On human behavior, responding to those and you can't really ratchet it back as quickly when you get a dry period based on what you've developed during a wet period. But I like what you mentioned about the conjunctive use of surface water and ground water.
I think that is so important and I mean, we do that in California, they go from like 70% surface water use during wet periods to 70% ground water during dry periods and people complain about the shift to groundwater during the droughts and stuff. But if we didn't use the surface water, we'd be in much worse shape.
But having irrigation systems and infrastructure that can source water from surface water and groundwater is oftentimes not available. So people either do one or the other. So taking advantage of those wet periods and surface water availability and then shifting to groundwater, I think that is fantastic.
And we need much more conjunctive management of surface water and groundwater. So, another aspect, and maybe shift a little bit, we talk a lot about climate impacts, floods and droughts and climate change and stuff, but another aspect is land use impact on water resources. China's also done large scale experiment with land use, in the Loess Plateau, where you were trying to reduce the sediment load, maybe to the Yellow River or things like that, and the reforestation in the Loess Plateau. Maybe you can describe that a little bit, Chunmiao and what the results of that and what the impacts on water were.
[00:33:19] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, this is very interesting. I will talk about land use change.
I think China really did a grand experiment in this back in 1999, they started the so called grain for green, a program at a large scale first in the Loess Plateau, and later on expand to many other parts of China. About the Loess Plateau, you know that's the source region for Yellow River.
There has been a significant soil erosion problem for the Loess Plateau, and then as sediment yield to Yellow River. That's why Yellow River kept going up because of so much sediment and people continuously built up the river banks to contain the river flow. And then with this “grain for green” program, the government paid farmers to stop farming and then grow the vegetation. When this program started in 1999, the vegetation coverage was at 32% for Loess Plateau, but now, last year (2022) it was like 64% so almost doubled and the impact on the sediment is even more dramatic because sediment now for Yellow River, it's a 0.2 gigatons, or billion tons, which is a historical low, dating all the way back to Tang dynasty a thousand years ago.
So it's really low now. Actually some people are starting to worry about just too little sediment and actually a high level of this sediment for comparison is the 1. 6 gigaton. So it's many-fold decrease. There's a concern now with just too much coverage of vegetation, too green, because that leads to a kind of reduction in runoff.
Some studies have shown that the surface water runoff versus precipitation was about 8% between 1980 to 1999. That is before this program, Green for Grain now reduced to 5% between 2000 and 2010. So that's fairly significant, almost by half decreased. In some areas, actually the surface runoff reduced by as much as 50%.
The reforestation led to the evapotranspiration increasing by about four or five millimeters. So, you see, there are a lot of factors involved, you do want to green, but you have to worry about the sediment, you have to worry about too little sediment or too little water available. Also, based on my own study, actually, our co authored paper on China's groundwater model at the national scale, actually we calculate something like a reduction of groundwater baseflow to Yellow River, around 23%. But I mean, it's more than this green for grain program, but many other factors too. But it's very significant decrease in groundwater baseflow. So for the reason I just discussed that some people have actually advocated for stopping the grain for green program.
But I think it's not, it has not been stopped or it's continued because a lot of complicated factors.
[00:36:45] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. So, so the grains that were being grown in the North Plateau, was it mostly like wheat and maize or things like that? And then was it, were replaced by forest or was it replaced by forest?
[00:36:58] Chunmiao Zheng: They simply stopped farming and just let the reforestation go by planting of trees.
[00:37:04] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. And so with the planting of trees, then you're replacing short rooted crops with deep rooted trees. And so that will reduce the recharge also to the underlying aquifer. And then as you mentioned, groundwater discharges to streams and that's the base flow component and that's being reduced also.
So with deeper rooted trees replacing shallow rooted crops, when you get rid of the fallow period from cropping where you have no evaporation of the water, when you don't have any crops growing, a lot of those things are changing the whole water cycle in that region. And then the impacts then are groundwater recharge, runoff and sediment yield and all of these different things.
So it's difficult sometimes to anticipate all of the effects of one change. What you described there is a little bit similar to what maybe in the US Midwest that they're proposing for biofuel production, where they're saying go from grain production to deep rooted switchgrass or perennial grasses. And so you would change the water cycle, you would change the recharge, change the runoff, change the base flow to the streams.
And so we need to consider all of those things when we promote some of these programs. And lastly, I think another aspect that you have been working on is the Tibetan Plateau and these Asian water towers. So these are huge sources of water and they are being impacted a lot by climate change.
Maybe you can describe the groundwater impacts of the changes that you've been seeing in the last couple of decades in that region.
[00:38:46] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, I've been lucky to also serve on this another research program’s steering committee. So I have spent most of my research time on the two committees and two programs.
This one focused on the impact of climate change on water resources and adaptive management in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. So again, we have a lot of people involved in my own research group, more focused on the groundwater. S The Tibetan Plateau is a source region, just for background information, for several very large Asian rivers, including in China, the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Mekong River. I It has the largest store of frozen water after the polar regions. So it's been referred to as a third pole and providing critical water supply to two billion people. So that's referred as the Asian Water Tower. And this region is very sensitive to climate change.
Actually, during 1980 to 2018, so that is almost 40 years, and the warming of this region was 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade, so that's about twice of global change. So very significant, intense warming has led to a large extensive glacier retreat. And also the permafrost thawing. We have done some modeling and prediction on how soon the permanent permafrost might disappear in the future.
I don't know how many years, anyway, it will not be too far away. . And also the thawing of permafrost and melting of glaciers is leading to a very large lake expansion in the plateau. This is an area with very little observation because it's difficult to get to. So we can see that we really need more observations, more monitoring networks.
And then, putting everything together and using datasets, like, related to a remote sensing product, such as GRACE, and then doing some earth system modeling, which is ongoing. The Tibean Plateau a very exciting area, maybe the last frontier for groundwater research in this type of region.
[00:41:08] Bridget Scanlon: So that's fascinating. And then this expansion of lakes and of course, the value of remote sensing been to see a lot of these things happening in years where you can't do it on the ground as readily. And I know it has been, it hasn't been fair on you that I have been asking you questions about a lot of different things, but you've been involved in so many different projects, but you're really, your passion seems to be water quality, water pollution, and China has been heavily industrialized and a lot of the economic development is benefiting from that.
And I guess now you are trying to help with the remediation of much of this pollution, and maybe you can describe some efforts on that front, wastewater treatment and things like that.
[00:41:54] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, when I first came to work in China, I was thinking that I would work on groundwater pollution control and remediation, but at that time, more than 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the country was more concerned with like surface water pollution and air pollution. And it did not get to groundwater pollution untilmuch later. When I started working here, the pollution really was pervasive, widespread. As you also know, when coming to China to visit, pollution with air, water, soil. But China, with the economic development, also becoming the second largest economy in the world, there were enough resources to actually fix some of the pollution problems. So China invested hundreds of billions U. S. dollar to address those problems. And particularly, I should mention those regulations. Very important ones referred as Water 10 Action Plans, 10 regulations for fixing water pollution, and also Air 10 Action Plans for air pollution, and Soil 10 Action Plans for soil pollution.
So with those three action plans for water, air, and soil, the Improvement to surface water and soil quality, air quality has been quite dramatic, as you can hear about it, read about it, right? It's very easy to see, because you can see the air, you can see the surface water. I'll just give you an example.
When I came to work in Shenzhen, 2015, at Southern University of Science and Technology, almost all 300 streams and little tributaries for Shenzhen were heavily polluted. And then the water quality, all grade five, the worst kind, grade from one being best, five the worst. And then, a lot of rivers, we call, black and smelly water body. Because when you walk over, you can smell and see the black water. And at that time, Shenzhen government started an initiative. With a total investment of 10 billion US dollar to fix surface water quality and right now the situation has been really much improved and all those black and smelly water bodies have disappeared.
But my true passion is groundwater, right? The groundwater contamination would take much longer to fix. There are reasons for that. It's more expensive, you cannot see groundwater, you need a lot of data, but it's hard to collect. And groundwater, simply, it's much more difficult to clean up. Last year, from the latest report on groundwater quality, 61% of all groundwater monitoring points are grade four or five on a scale of one to five. Five is worst, four very bad. So there's still a very formidable challenge ahead for fixing groundwater pollution in China. But fortunately, China has realized the importance of soil and groundwater pollution control. So it's treating it as a priority. I give you an example. I have given three presentations since April at three conferences, national conferences on this topic. So certainly groundwater pollution is getting a lot of attention. Water quality and quantity obviously go hand in hand. So whatever we can do to improve water quality helps with water sustainability.
[00:45:37] Bridget Scanlon: I was reading a new World Bank report and it came out not so long ago about groundwater and how it's a hidden resource and stuff.
But one of the concepts that was mentioned in that report was a weak sustainability approach that economists talk about, that you have to develop economically first, and then you may overuse resources or pollute or something, but then you will have the economic resources to address those issues. So they use the term weak sustainability.
So I don't know if you think that applies to China and you have, China has come a long way with another World Bank report stating that 800 million people came out of extreme poverty in China from the development there. And some of that was agricultural development, irrigation and fertilizer and then industrial development.
So all of these have helped to bring people out of poverty, but maybe in the process then the resources have been degraded and maybe now you have the financial resources to address these issues. It's also problems, but sometimes it takes a lot of time.
[00:46:46] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, Bridget, I like the concept. I think, what I've seen in China quite follows that, the concept, because, we all talk about preventing pollution before it's been polluted.
But most people, I think the countries, the poor countries or developing countries, they have to develop their economy and make people raise their living standard. So it's very hard for them to spend a lot of resources on pollution control. But once they reach some level, I guess. With enough resources, as you say, economic power, then they will, have to address them.
It's maybe at the higher cost. It has often happened that way. It's fortunately, in China, there's really a keen sense right now that, ecological environmental quality is of primary importance, from the top leadership to the public. So that's really a good thing and the country waiting to invest much more heavily to fix pollution, environment, air, water, soil, pollution, and to protect the environment better.
And also for China, I think it's fortunate because there are a lot of valuable lessons China can learn from developed countries. Environmental protection in developed countries like the US or Japan over the past 40 years, or 30 years, has resulted in a lot of lessons, very helpful lessons. Also there have been significant progresses and technological advances that we did not have 40 years ago, or 30 years ago. So now China can tap into those new advances, new technologies to help solve environmental problems in a more sustainable way.
[00:48:37] Bridget Scanlon: So that sounds like you're fairly optimistic about the future Chunmiao I mean, considering your presentation to the Birdsall Dreiss lecture more than maybe about 15 years ago about the water crisis in China. You've seen a lot of changes over that time period. and so are you pretty optimistic about the future? And you steer a lot of programs, you serve lead roles in many of these huge programs. And so you have a good vantage point to see how things are evolving. How do you see things going in the future?
[00:49:08] Chunmiao Zheng: Yeah, Bridget, thank you for bringing that up. I did enjoy the lecture tour. I remember I concluded each lecture with a quote from Charles Dickens. It was the best of time, it was the worst of time, right? So I'm optimistic. I think I'm hopeful about the future.
I think China is still facing a lot of huge challenges in water that we just touched on a little bit today. There is still a water shortage crisis, actually, in many water scarce regions in China. But China, I think, has realized the challenges. And it's willing to spend significant resources to address those.
And so I believe that China has made a lot of progress, steady progress. And facing up to water and environmental challenges over the last two decades, and I think it will continue. So to answer your question. Yes, I'm optimistic. And personally, I'm doing the best I can to help. On a side note, also as a promotion, I founded last year a new open access journal called Sustainable Horizons, and with a focus on sustainability, including sustainable technology, sustainable health, sustainable environment, and sustainable management.
And more than 200 professionals from over 30 countries have joined our advisory and editorial boards. So international collaboration is really crucial to solving environmental sustainability and global change problems. I hope the new journal serves as a bridge to deeper and stronger international collaboration.
[00:51:03] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, I would like to just thank you so much. Our guest today was Chunmiao Zheng, and he is a director at Shenzhen Institute for Sustainable Development at SUSTech, Southern University of Science and Technology, and is now helping develop, as a vice president, a new university, Eastern Institute of Technology in Ningbo.
And I hope you will be very successful in developing a great university at Ningbo. And I really appreciate your talking about many of the different issues. And what I like about your work is the integration of all of the drivers, you're not siloed. Your main focus has been groundwater in the past, but you're looking at the connections with surface water, upstream, downstream, and connections with other sectors.
And also is the socio hydrologic aspect connecting with stakeholders and then the governance aspects trying to integrate these different government agencies and trying to push for that. So I wish you success in the future, Chunmiao and really appreciate you taking the time to educate us today about the issues in China.
[00:52:10] Chunmiao Zheng: Thank you, Bridget. You are my role model. I'm just learning from you.
