Changes in suspended sediments in the Yangtze River Estuary from 1984 to 2020: Responses to basin and estuarine engineering constructions

Suspended sediments in the estuary play an important role in regulating the erosion-accretion and shaping the geomorphological patterns. Yet, it can be strongly impacted by the human activities. Constructions of basin and estuarine engineering in the Yangtze River Estuary (YRE), including constructions of Three Gorges Dam (TGD) further upstream of the Yangtze River and Deep Waterway Project (DWP) in the estuary, have greatly modified the distribution of estuarine suspended sediment concentration (SSC). In this study, we retrieved the surface water SSC in the YRE from a total of 149 Landsat-TM/ETM+/OLI images (from 1984 to 2020) and 515 GOCI images (from 2011 to 2020) to obtain its long-term dynamics. The results indicate that the SSC estimation model performed well with a mean absolute percentage error of 12.83% and a root mean square error of 0.027 g/L. The SSC in the YRE demonstrated an overall declining pattern over the past 37 years, particularly during the flood season, which was related to the decrease in the sediment discharge of Yangtze River. The SSC in different sub-regions across the entire YRE responded differently to the reduced sediment discharge caused by the impoundment of the TGD. The SSC in the inner estuary responded promptly with a 40.3% decline noted immediately after the impoundment of the TGD, whereas hysteresis of SSC changes was found in the estuarine turbidity maximum zone (TMZ) and have begun to decline by 20.0–30.0% in the recent 5 years. Constructions of local estuarine engineering, such as the DWP also exert important controls on the estuarine SSC dynamics by blocking the lateral transport of suspended sediments between the shoal and the river channel. Our results highlight the strong influence of engineering constructions on the SSC dynamics in the world large river-influenced estuaries.