Study On The Alleviation Technologies Of Flood And Drought At TaiHu Lake Basin In The Qing Dynasty

Since the centre of economic gravity moving southward,there had been a fine agricultural tradition in Taihu Lake basin.In the Qing dynasty,the flood and drought occurred frequently and brought the massive loss to the local community which seriously affected the local agricultural production and people's property security.In order to alleviate the disasters,the government of the Qing dynasty took the positive measures to prevent and reduce the disasters.The intelligent working people also had done a lot to reduce the flood and drought affection by adopting a series of relevant technologies.This paper adopts the methods of proofed analysis,literature methodology,interdisciplinary methodology etc.,and widely collects the data from the historical files,archives,and the local chronicle files,so as to carry on the comprehensive induction and analysis based on the previous researches.This paper is divided into the following five parts:The first part defines the region scope of Taihu Lake,generally accounts on the flood and drought in the Qing Dynasty and explains the influence of the disasters to the local people's living and cultivation.The second part,under the perspective of the ecological environment history,takes 1849 flood as an example.This paper mainly analyzes the causes of the flood and drought around Taihu Lake in the Qing Dynasty from prospects of natural and human factors.The conclusion is that the main reasons for the frequent flood and drought in the Qing dynasty are as follows:The special geographical environment,the unique climatic conditions,the natural influence of " the minor ice age ",together with the man-made influences of the rapid population growth,encircling the lake,felling forest and so on.The third part analyzes the prevention technologies and measures for flood and drought around Taihu Lake in the Qing Dynasty.The government of the Qing Dynasty and its working people prevent the disasters mainly through following technologies and ways:qualitative forecasting celestial phenomenon and physical images,quantitative observing atmospheric phenomenon,farmland tillage management prevention technology,warehouse grain storage technology and advising class farming policies,perfecting the system of warehouse,optimizing crops variety,and diversifying management etc,with organic combination of various elements within the prevention mechanism.The fourth part analyzes the alleviation technologies for flood and drought around Taihu Lake in the Qing Dynasty.The technologies fell into two categories like the agricultural disaster reduction technology,the hydraulic engineering disaster reduction technology.The disaster reduction technology mainly includes:maintenance of soil fertility after disasters,Irrigation and water conservation,watercourse project technologies and seawall project technologies.The fifth part evaluates the effects of the technologies for preventing and reducing flood and drought around Taihu Lake in the Qing Dynasty,comments on the characters of the technologies and its evolution trajectory,finds out the positive effects after implementation of them along with the defects of the relevant measures.The application of technologies for preventing and reducing flood and drought around Taihu Lake in the Qing Dynasty alleviated the disaster impact to a certain extent,which laid a foundation for the government and the people to prevent and reduce the disasters then.Also,it will provide a new prospect and effective references for the present.