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Honghu Lake-a lake with rolling waves

Honghu LakeOne famous Chinese revolutionary song sings, " the wave runs after wave and it is our hometown beside the Honghu Lake." Honghu Lake hinted in the song is located in Honghu City, China's Hubei Province.

Honghu Lake stretches over two neighbor cities, Honghu and Jianli, and Yangze River is only four kilometers away. The lake is the remains of ancient grand Yunmeng Marsh and took shape during 2500-900 BC. The "History of Jiajing Yang County" of Ming Dynasty records that there existed two linking lakes, i.e. upper Honghu and lower Honghu. In 400 B.C. the lakes expanded and swallowed each other, and the two into one grand lake. Later the lake was dried up and became a marsh. It didn't get the current profile until the late of 19 century.

Honghu Lake covers 344.4 square kilometers when the water level is 25 meters. The maximum width and depth is 20.9 and 2.2 meters respectively, comparing the average 20.9 and 1.91 meters. The water storage reaches 6.58x108 cubic meters.

Honghu Lake is positioned in the subtropical humid monsoon climate zone. It has multi-function including water storage, irrigation, fishery, shipping, water supply, etc.

remote sensing image of the Yangtze River flood in 1998There were many lakes dotted along the Yangtze River between Honghu Lake and Wuhan City. In flood times, the River and the Lake were interconnected. The past half-century witnessed many large-scale water projects that played an important role in protecting Wuhan, Capital City of Hubei Province, such as building new dykes, combining old dykes and so on. In recent years, with the over-exploitation of aquiculture, the ecology of Honghu Lake has been seriously destroyed, especially in wetlands near lakeshores. Some lakes had got disappeared such as the Datong Lake and Dasha Lake due to reclamation. Thing will get out of control if we let this go on.

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