Sedimentological processes: Progress of estuarine research in China over last 50 years

It is well known that the estuarine research in China has got great achievements since the past 50 years. The development of estuarine research in China and progress in fundamental study are presented firstly in this paper. Especially in the aspect of theoretic studies, a distinctive feature is the combination studies of dynamics, sedimentology and geomorphology, which obtain a series of achievements, such as estuarine diluted water, estuarine fronts, turbidity maximum, sediment movement, formation of mouth bar, estuarine discontinuity phenomena, estuarine development, etc. Then some successful applications are introduced taking the Qiantang River Estuary and Yangtze Estuary as examples. Finally, main directions of estuarine research are discussed on fundamental study, the impacts of human activities on estuaries, estuarine material flux, sediment movement, prediction of estuarine erosion and accretion, estuarine discontinuity, artificial estuaries, land reclamation and wetland protection.