The Shiyang River (石羊河), previously called the Gu River (谷水), flows through the eastern

Hexi Corridor The Hexi Corridor ( ), also known as the Gansu Corridor, is an important historical region located in the modern western Gansu province of China. It refers to a narrow stretch of traversable and relatively arable plain west of the Yellow River's O ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The catchment area of the Shiyang River covers about 41,600 km², most of which lies within today's Wuwei

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province of China, province and above a Counties of the People's Republic of China, county in China's ...

of the

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

Province. The river originates from the

Qilian Mountains The Qilian Mountains (), together with the Altyn-Tagh sometimes known as the Nan Shan, as it is to the south of the Hexi Corridor, is a northern outlier of the Kunlun Mountains, forming the border between Qinghai and the Gansu provinces of n ...

, and flows north-east, toward the

Gobi The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...

Desert. The Wuqiaoling Range (乌鞘岭), in Tenzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, forms the dividing ridge between the

endorheic An endorheic basin ( ; also endoreic basin and endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water (e.g. rivers and oceans); instead, the water drainage flows into permanent ...

Shiyang River catchment in the north and the exorheic

Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...

catchment in the south. In the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

, the Baiting Lake (白亭海) was one of the terminal lakes of Shiyang River. However, the Baiting Lake has dried up and the modern terminal lake of Shiyang River is the Qingtu Lake (青土湖). Agricultural oases are distributed in the Shiyang River catchment, with Wuwei being the main city of this region. Reservoirs have been constructed for the purposes of irrigation and flood prevention. There were 24 reservoirs in the Shiyang River Basin as of 2000. The population in the Shiyang River catchment was about 2 268 900 as of 2003. Currently people in this region are facing problems of overdevelopment and

desertification Desertification is a type of gradual land degradation of Soil fertility, fertile land into arid desert due to a combination of natural processes and human activities. The immediate cause of desertification is the loss of most vegetation. This i ...

. In the lower reaches of Shiyang River is the Minqin Oasis, which is surrounded by the Tengger Desert (腾格里沙漠) in the east and the

Badain Jaran Desert The Badain Jaran Desert () is a desert in China which spans the provinces of Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. It covers an area of . By size it is the third largest desert in China. This desert is home to some of the tallest stationary dunes o ...

(巴丹吉林沙漠) in the west. Currently efforts are being made to prevent the desertification and disappearance of the Minqin Oasis.

References

{{Coord missing, Gansu Rivers of Gansu