Distribution characteristics of green tides and its impact on environment in the Yellow Sea

Abstract

Large-scale outbreaks of green tides in the Yellow Sea affect the development of local tourism and aquaculture and significantly damage the coastal ecological environment. To study the distribution characteristics of green tides and to explore their impact on the environment, a coupled physical-ecological model (LTRANS-GT) based on the Lagrangian TRANSport model (LTRANS) was constructed in this paper to simulate the growth and dissipation process of Ulva prolifera and to obtain its drift trajectory and biomass. The results show that the tracks of the green tide are mainly divided into three categories, namely, northwestward, northward, and eastward. The green tide biomass showed a single-peak with seasonal variation in most years (entering a rapid proliferation period in May–June, reaching a peak biomass after developing for approximately 30 days, then dying out rapidly and basically disappearing by August), and showed a double-peak only in a few years due to extreme weather effects. In 2017, the biomass of U. prolifera was the lowest, with a maximum wet weight of only 24600 tons, while the largest biomass occurred in 2013, with a maximum wet weight of more than 560,000 tons. The interannual difference in the biomass of U. prolifera was mainly due to its initial biomass and the difference in nutrient concentration in the area where it was located. The year in which U. prolifera absorbed the most dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) was 2013, with absorption values of 3973 tons and 114 tons, respectively; and the year in which U. prolifera absorbed the least DIN and DIP was 2017, with absorption values of 172 tons and 5 tons, respectively. During the period of U. prolifera outbreak, the consumption of DIN and DIP in the sea area where it occurred accounted for approximately 43.65% and 0.6% of the total discharge of the rivers, and 26.86% and 6.1% of the atmospheric deposition, respectively. The impact of green tide outbreaks on the annual nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient budget of the entire Yellow Sea was relatively small, but the impact on the area where U. prolifera grows and decays can not be ignored. In dissipation period, the decay of U. prolifera may make DON and DOP double near Shandong coast.