Check dams on China's Loess Plateau: An overview

Abstract Check dams are widely constructed on China's Loess Plateau, which had a total number of 58,776 by the end of 2019. Great achievements in check dam construction have been gained regarding the economic and environmental impacts. This study reviews the remarkable benefits of check dams on the land reclamation and environmental improvement on the Loess Plateau, and sediment reduction entering the Yellow River. However, the flood incidents on check dams have been frequently reported for the past decades, which has attracted more attention in the context of climate change and extreme rainfall events recently. Advances in the flood migration techniques achieved by the research group led by the first author have been highlighted to migrate the breach risk of check dams due to floods. The “family tree method” has been proposed to determine the survival status and critical rainfall threshold of each check dam in the complicated dam system. An updated dam breach flood evaluation framework and the corresponding numerical algorithm (i.e., DB‐IWHR) have been developed. Moreover, innovative types of water‐release facilities for check dams, including geobag stepped spillway and prestressed concrete cylinder pipe in the underlying conduit, have been proposed and developed. Finally, the perspectives concerning the check dam construction on the Loess Plateau have been put forward.