Longshore suspended sediment transport and its implications for submarine erosion off the Yangtze River Estuary

Coastal currents that originate from large rivers play a key role in delivering sediment to shelf regions. Quantifying their transport capability is therefore essential to understanding the sediment budgets and the consequent deposition or erosion of coastal areas. In February 2012, we observed the sediment transport carried by the Min-Zhe Coastal Current that originates from the Yangtze River mouth and calculated a flux of 18.7 tons per second on a cross-shore section. In this period the coastal current was at a typical status, which allowed us to estimate a total annual sediment transport of 0.27billion tons southward. This result was more than three times the present annual Yangtze River sediment discharge, suggesting that considerable net sediment removal occurs in the coastal regions. The sediment transport 0.27 billion tons/year is probably the deposition/erosion threshold for the East China Sea coast north of our study site. Analysis of historical Yangtze River sediment influx records showed, that the onset and acceleration of coastal erosion was closely linked with the operation of the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) upstream of the Yangtze River.