An important progress has been made in the research on the evolution of river development by scholars from China, the United States of America and Canada. And the findings are published in a paper “Abrupt Drainage Basin Reorganization Following a Pleistocene River Capturein Nature Communications (impact factor 12.35). The first author is Niannian Fan, an assistant researcher on Xingnian Liu’s team at the key laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountainous River Development and Protection which is also the primary institute on the research paper.
Mr. Niannian Fan started his research idea over ten years ago when he noticed that Chaiwen River of the Yimeng mountainshas a large bend, where the river abruptly changes directions by ~300°, which separates the lower and upstream portions of the catchment. He learned through his exchange programs in the United States and Canada that this research topic was unique and barely tapped into. Thus, he began a joint researh with both domestic and foreign research institutions such as the Ocean University of China, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research,Chinese Academy of Science; University of British Columbia, Canada; and California Institute of Technology and so on. After more than 30 on-site investigations combined with unmanned aerial vehicle surveying, sonar bathymetric detector, light-release and carbon 14 measurements, he has completed his research and published a research paper.
“Due to the entrenchment of the Chaiwen River, we infer that a knickpoint also translated the upstream paleo-Yihe, reversing its flowing direction and creating the Daotang River. This knickpoint is expressed as the wind gap between the Daotang River and the Yihe River and propogated upstream at rates greater than 1.9 km in less than 80kyr.” (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06238-6)
This landscape provides critical insight into the mechanism of river capture and subsequent landscape adjustment.
Niannian Fan, an assistant researcher on Professor Xingnian Liu’s team, has published an article as the first author in Nature Communications, Water Resources Research, Journal of Hydrology, Journal of Geophysical Research and Scientific Reports respectively in recent years. He epitomizes the outstanding work Sichuan University has done in the training of young scholars. This research project is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. And the local government has provided ample support during the research.
This article is accessible at the following link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06238-6.pdf
