Nearshore bedform instability in the eastern entrance to the Qiongzhou Strait, South China Sea

Six bathymetric transect profiles were drawn from the nautical charts of 1942, 1962 and 1992 to show that the nearshore seabed remained unstable during the recent 50 years in the middle channel of the eastern entrance to the Qiongzhou Strait, South China Sea. Our results demonstrate that the multi-year averaged seabed aggradational rate was 25 cm/a and erosion rate was 12.5 cm/a. Lateral migration rate of the sea bedform identified from the historical contours was about 100 m/a in the SE direction. Bedform measurements were made using GPY Shallow Seismic Profiler in 1994 in the study area. The records revealed four types of distinctive bedforms that were composed of fine and medium sands. The average spacing of large and small-scale sand dunes is 416 m and 144 m and the average height remains 8.8 mand 4.9 m. The spatial and temporal equilibrium-range spectra of numerical bedform records were applied to estimate short term celerity of bedform movement. Results indicate that large and small dunes migrated at an average celerity of 0.02 cm/hr eastward and 0.09 cm/hr westward in the calm sea weather, while their celerity can reach 53 cm/hr eastward during typhoon season and is only 0.008 cm/hr westward when NNE winds prevail. The results also show that the larger the temporal and spatial scale is, the smaller the bedform movement celerity appears. On the other hand, the smaller-scale bedform celerity of the present study is much greater than that of flume, empirical and theoretical data, but close to the wind tunnel and field-measured data of similar grain size.