Modelling Hydrological Connectivity in the Marine-Freshwater Interaction in the Yellow River Estuary of China

Abstract

It’s significant to probe hydrological connectivity within the estuarine area for implementing the ecological restoration experiment on the damaged coastal wetland and the methodology development of wetland eco-hydrology. We established the Integrated Accessibility Index to Marine and Freshwater (IAIMF) to evaluate the hydrological connectivity based on the accessibility principles. 1 km grid was setup for quantifying spatially the grid based hydrological connectivity within the interaction zone of the freshwater and marine water in the Yellow River Estuary of China. The results demonstrated that: 1) IAIMF indicated a gradually changed hydrological connectivity from the freshwater dominative area to marine dominative area, which presented quantitatively the detailed spatial characteristics of the hydrological connectivity in the study area. 2) The correlation coefficient between the soil salinity data and IAIMF reached 0.694, demonstrating that IAIMF is reasonable to quantify the hydrological connectivity in the estuary area. 3) IAIMF played a good role for indicating the vegetation partition of marine-freshwater. IAIMF revealed a linkage between the spatial distribution of coastal wetland vegetation with environmental characteristics of creeks and soil salinity. Due to its presenting the key information of water accessibility to the wetland habitat, IAIMF can provide more effective and scientific schemes for decision makers on the costal wetland restoration and biodiversity conservation.