Abstract
There is very little information available in the western literature on the chemical compositions of the major rivers of the People's Republic of China1,2. Since these include the largest in terms of sediment transport3 (Huang He or Yellow), the third largest in terms of flow4 (Chiang Jiang or Yangtze) and major streams draining the Tibetan plateau, this lack of data represents a significant gap in our knowledge of the chemical denudation rates of the continents as a whole and of south, central and eastern Asia in particular. To begin to rectify this situation, advantage has been taken of recent visits by US scientists to the People's Republic of China to collect suitable samples for analysis. It was found that the chemistry of such rivers is dominated by the weathering of carbonates and evaporites, with no pronounced effects of the degradation of aluminosilicates.
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Ming-hui, H., Stallard, R. & Edmond, J. Major ion chemistry of some large Chinese rivers. Nature 298, 550–553 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/298550a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/298550a0
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