Impact of Recent Rapid Decrease of Fluvial Discharge from Large Rivers on Sedimentary Environment in the Western Yellow Sea-from Numerical Perspective

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The East China Sea Shelf is characterized by an enormous amount of sediments discharged from rivers; suspended sediments supplied from two Chinese Rivers, the Huanghe and the Chang jiang were as large as 12 percent of those supplied from world rivers, even though the area of the shelf sea occupies only 0.35 percent of total sea area. It is therefore essential to understand the fate of such sediments to understand the ecosystem and morphology of the shelf sea. The current study focused on the occurrence of sediment resuspension on the shelf which had not been investigated in the shelf scale in space and in year-round scale in time. Estimates on the bottom stress induced by tidal currents, wind waves, and subtidal currents for the last ten years have shown that not only winter storms but also passage of typhoons in summer seems to have a large impact on the resuspension process.