Journal of Geographical Sciences

Evolution of the historical polder landscape in the ancient Danyang wetland, lower Yangtze River, China, during the last 3000 years

HU Xiaosi, WU Li, ZHUANG Yijie, WANG Xinyuan, MA Chunmei, LI Linying, GUAN Houchun, LU Shuguang, LUO Wenjing, XU Ziyi

Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2024, 34(10): 2053-2073. DOI: 10.1007/s11442-024-2282-3

Historical periods	Dynastic eras	Time span (yr)	Newly built area (km²)	Changing rate of newly built area (km²/100 yr)
S&A Period-Han Dynasty	770BC-220AD	990	54.24	5.48
Three Kingdoms	220-280AD	60	324.41	540.68
Jin and Sui Dynasties	280-618AD	338	52.67	15.58
Tang Dynasty	618-907AD	289	23.47	8.12
Five Dynasties	907-960AD	53	93.77	176.92
Song Dynasty	960-1279AD	319	693.84	217.50
Ming Dynasty	1368-1644AD	276	282.19	102.24
Modern Times	1644-1980AD	336	396.45	117.99

Table 1 The newly built area of the poldered fields with a unit of km²/100 yr in the past 3000 years

Other figure/table from this article

Figure 1 Location of the ancient Danyang wetland in southeastern Anhui province
Figure 2 Methodological flow chart showing how our research was designed and carried out
Figure 3 Change in the areas of the ancient Danyang wetland and poldered fields during the historical periods
Figure 4 The distributions of the poldered fields and historical sites varied across different dynasties, including the Spring and Autumn Period to the Three Kingdoms Period (a), the Jin and Sui Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty (b), the Five Dynasties to the Song Dynasty (c), the Ming Dynasty (d) and Modern Times (e) in the study area
Figure 5 Dynamics on the formation and changes of polder landscapes. (a) Summer insolation at 30°N (W/m²) (Berger and Loutre, 1991); (b) Annual mean temperature (°C) (Zhu et al., 2008); (c) Annual precipitation (mm) (Sun et al., 2019); (d) Average chain length value (Liu et al., 2018); (e) Sea level (m) (Xie et al., 2012); (f) Population density (Pop./km²) (Zheng, 2019); (g) Newly built area (km²), (h) Total cumulative area (km²); and (i) Wetland area (km²).
Figure 6 Images of different polder landscape patterns