Xiamen Bay in South China has experienced extensive coastal exploitation since the 1950s,resulting in some severe environmental problems.Local authorities now have completed or are implementing many environmental restoration projects.Evaluating the cumulative impact of exploitation and restoration activities on the environment is a complicated multi-disciplinary problem.However,hydrodynamic changes in the bay caused by such coastal projects can be characterized directly and definitively through numerical modeling.This paper assesses the cumulative effect of coastal projects on the hydrodynamic setting using a high-resolution numerical modeling method that makes use of tidal current speeds and the tidal prism as two hydrodynamic indices.Changes in tidal velocity and the characteristics of the tidal prism show that hydrodynamic conditions have declined from 1938 to 2007 in the full-tide area.The tidal current speed and tidal prism have decreased by 40% in the western part of the bay and 20% in the eastern part of the bay.Because of the linear relationship between tidal prism and area,the degraded hydrodynamic conditions are anticipated to be restored to 1972 levels following the completion of current and proposed restoration projects,i.e.33% and 15% decrease in the hydrodynamic conditions of 1938 for the western and eastern parts of the bay,respectively.The results indicate that hydrodynamic conditions can be restored to some extent with the implementation of a sustainable coastal development plan,although a full reversal of conditions is not possible.To fully assess the environmental changes in a region,more indices,e.g.,water quality and ecosystem parameters,should be considered in future evaluations.
The Jiulong River Estuary (JRE) is a typical subtropical macro-tide estuary on the southwest coast of the Taiwan Strait (TWS),which has been greatly impacted by human activities over the past 30 years.To understand nutrient dynamics and fluxes under such a heavy background of anthropogenic perturbation,eight cruises were conducted from April 2008 to April 2011,covering both wet (May to September) and dry (October to April next year) seasons.Nutrient concentrations were very high for the freshwater end-member in the upper reach of the JRE (nitrate (NO 3-N):120-230 mol L-1 ;nitrite (NO 2-N):5-15 mol L-1 ;ammonium (NH 4-N):15-170 mol L-1 ;soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP):1.2-3.5 mol L-1 ;dissolved silicate (DSi):200-340 mol L-1).In dry seasons,concentrations of these nutrients were higher than in wet seasons.Nitrate was the dominant chemical species of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN),with percentages of 67%-96% in wet seasons and 55%-72% in dry seasons.Distributions of NO 3-N and DSi against salinity were nearly constant during all cruises,and showed generally conservative mixing behaviors in the estuary (1
YAN XiuLiZHAI WeiDongHONG HuaShengLI YanGUO WeiDongHUANG Xiao
Photo-production of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) from chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is an important transformation process in marine carbon cycle, but little is known about this process in Chinese coastal systems. This study investigated an estuarine water sample and a coastal seawater sample from the subtropical waters in southeast of China. Water samples were exposed to natural sunlight and the absorption and fluorescence of CDOM as well as the DIC concentration were measured in the summer of 2009. The estuarine water had higher CDOM level, molecular weight and proportion of humic-like fluorescent components than the seawater that exhibited abundant tryptophan-like fluorescent component. After a 3-day irradiation, the CDOM level decreased by 45% in the estuarine water and 20% in the seawater, accompanied with a decrease in the molecular weight and aromaticity of DOM which was inferred from an increase in the absorption spectral slope parameter. The photo-degradation rates of all the five fluorescent components were also notable, in particular two humic-like components (C4 and C5) were removed by 78% and 69% in the estuarine water and by 69% and 56% in the seawater. The estuarine water had a higher photo-production rate of DIC than the seawater (4.4 vs. 2.5 μmol/(L·day)), in part due to its higher CDOM abundance. The differences in CDOM compositions between the two types of waters might be responsible for the higher susceptibility of the estuarine water to photo-degradation and hence could also affect the photo-production process of DIC.
Weidong GuoLiyang YangXiangxiang YuWeidong ZhaiHuasheng Hong
