Riverbed erosion of the final 565 kilometers of the Yangtze River (Changjiang) following construction of the Three Gorges Dam

The world’s largest hydropower dam, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD), spans the upper Yangtze River in China, creating a 660-km long and 1.1-km wide reservoir upstream. Several recent studies reported a considerable decline in sediment load of the Lowermost Yangtze River (LmYR) and a rapid erosion in the subaqueous delta of the river mouth after the closure of the TGD in 2003. However, it is unknown if the TGD construction has also affected river channel and bed formation of the LmYR. In this study, we compared bathymetric data of the last 565 kilometers of the Yangtze River’s channel between 1998 and 2013. We found severe channel erosion following the TGD closure, with local riverbed erosion up to 10 m deep. The total volume of net erosion from the 565-km channel amounted to 1.85 billion m³, an equivalent of 2.59 billion metric tons of sediment, assuming a bulk density of 1.4 t/m³ for the riverbed material. The largest erosion occurred in a 100-km reach close to the Yangtze River mouth, contributing up to 73% of the total net eroded channel volume.