Pathways of suspended sediments transported from the Yellow River mouth to the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea

Abstract

The concentration of suspended particulate matter in the Yellow River is very high, and the Yellow River is one of the main sources of sediment in China's coastal waters. The diffusion of substances from the Yellow River into the sea is of great significance to the ecological environments of the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea. Thus, the transport pathways and mechanisms of sediment delivered by the Yellow River are hot topics. In this paper, transport pathways, seasonal variations and their relationship between them and wind direction and flow field in the Bohai Sea were investigated based on observational data (suspended sediment concentration, temperature, and salinity) and MODIS imagery and ocean current data from ROMS. This study shows that the sediments from the Yellow River are mainly transported outward along two pathways: along the west side of the central Bohai Shoal to the central part of the Bohai Sea and along the Bohai Strait to the Yellow Sea. Winter is the main season for outward expansion. The interannual variation in the pathway exhibits little correlation with the sediment transport volume of the Yellow River, so the re-suspended sediment from the seabed is the source of the outward diffusion of sediment from the Yellow River into the sea. The interannual variations in the two pathways are closely related to sea surface temperature (SST), flow field, wind speed and wind direction.