Disasters caused by deforestation

The most familiar is the Loess Plateau.

Historically, since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Loess Plateau has experienced three climaxes of deforestation and land reclamation. The first time was the large-scale reclamation in Qin and Han Dynasties (organized by border guards) and the reclamation by immigrants. This large-scale "reclamation" has caused large-scale destruction of forests in northern Shanxi and northern Shaanxi. The second time was a large-scale "reclamation" in the Ming Dynasty, which caused unprecedented havoc to the ecological environment in the northern part of the Loess Plateau. According to textual research, in the early Ming Dynasty, the system of "ploughing fields" was vigorously promoted in northern Shaanxi (Yan 'an, Suide and Yulin areas) and northern Shanxi on the Loess Plateau, and the task of destroying forests and reclaiming land was imposed on every border guard. From here, we can easily see that the system of "reclaiming wasteland" implemented in the Ming Dynasty caused serious damage to the environment. The third reclamation was in the Qing dynasty, and the system of rewarding reclamation was implemented. The scope of reclamation moved from northern Shaanxi and northern Shanxi to southern Inner Mongolia, and millions of acres of grassland in the northern Loess Plateau and Ordos Plateau were reclaimed as farmland, which made the land desertification and soil erosion intensified. As a result, the sediment concentration of the Yellow River ranks first in the world and becomes a suspended river that brings great disasters to people. (According to rough statistics, before 1950s, the burst flood in the lower Yellow River recorded about 1500 times, and there were twenty or thirty times of major diversion. The flood starts from Haihe River in the north and reaches Huaihe River in the south, covering an area of 250,000 square kilometers, which has had a great impact on the geographical environment of the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain in China. )