Distributive hydraulic engineering, cross‐scale landscape planning, and climate change resilience: On the water‐adaptive strategy in the Huai'an–Yangzhou Section of China's Grand Canal

Abstract

Water system plays a key role in the coupled human‐nature system, and ancient people's experiences to build a water‐adaptative way of life still shed light on human's pursuit for climate resilience today with their innate traditional ecological wisdom. In this paper, taking the Huai'an‐Yangzhou Section of China's Grand Canal, and particularly its hydraulic engineering system as an example, we show the system's success in addressing the multi‐dimensional challenges in a historical geographical context, as well as its landscape‐shaping power across the entire lower Yellow‐Huai River Basin up until today. Therefore, we argue that the system is not merely a hydraulic engineering project, but a cross‐scale adaptive strategy that has deeply impacted generations of people's way of livelihood with its intrinsic resilient nature. We attribute the success to the advantages brought about by the “distributive hydraulic engineering” approach, which is reflected in the ancient Grand Canal‐management, over the “master‐structure dependent” approach which appears to be the common practice in modern hydraulic engineering. For testing the hypothesis, we build complex system models representing the two approaches with the Qingkou Hydraulic Nexus as an example, and by running long‐term simulation, we evaluate the performance of the two approaches with respect to long‐term resilience. We show from a complex network perspective that the former has significant flexibility advantages, and outperforms the former in multi‐goal fulfillment capacities and long‐term resilience especially under a low‐tech, tight resource constraints condition. We conclude the paper with discussions on the implications of the findings, and argue that though with limitations, the traditional ecological wisdom as reflected in the Grand Canal case, with its holistic approach and flexibility design, still sheds lights on today's large‐scale hydraulic engineering projects that pursue a resilient solution for long‐term adaptive survival for the mankind.

Locality and the adaptation of river‐related built environment

“…With the functional value of eliminating floods and improving the efficiency of water resources, water conservancy heritage is the concentrated embodiment of ancient people's water adaptability. L. Y. Xu, Peng, et al (2022) and Y. Q. Xu, Yang, et al (2022) took the Huai'an‐Yangzhou Section of China's Grand Canal, and particularly its hydraulic engineering system, as an example and attributed its success to the advantages brought about by the ‘distributive hydraulic engineering’ approach by the ancient Grand Canal management, compared to the ‘master‐structure dependent’ approach, which appears to be common practice in modern hydraulic engineering. Shi and Zhang (2022) comprehensively examined the flood control heritage of the Yongding River in the late Qing Dynasty associated with the Marco Polo Bridge section, 1890–1899.…”

“…The results indicate that there is no inevitable correlation between the level of economic development and the rise and fall of traditional villages. L. Y. Xu, Peng, et al (2022) and Y. Q. Xu, Yang, et al (2022) analyzed the site selection and distribution pattern of Chinese traditional villages along the Yellow River in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Results revealed that site selection and adaptation factors were the result of the area the river covered and the channel density, the distance of the settlement from the river, river width, and river bank shape.…”

Landscape Design under the Influence of Digitalization

“…The modern sense of landscape planning and also the design, because of industrialization, environmental pollution, general human unreasonable felling of trees, etc. on the modern landscape planning and also design has emerged as a result of the industrialization, environmental pollution and also human's unreasonable cutting down of trees, which have both damaged nature and human's body and mind [1][2][3][4].…”

Population, Wars, and the Grand Canal in Chinese History

“…It is worth noting that there are various studies examining the geographical shifting [9], cultural influence [10,11], historical uniqueness [2,3], and infrastructure sustainability of the Grand Canal [12]. The special socio-ecological landscape created by the Grand Canal [13] and the making of the Grand Canal as a heritage site [14] are also highlighted. However, the main focus is still put on the role of the Grand Canal in facilitating regional development via increasing accessibility [4,[15][16][17][18][19], at least in English literature.…”