Spatio-temporal distribution and control factors of surface suspended sediment concentration in the mud deposition along eastern coast offshore of the Liaodong Peninsula

As a typical small and medium-sized river, the source to sink process of fine sediment from the Yalu River catchment to the mud deposition of the offshore eastern Liaodong Peninsula is characterized by a unique mechanism. Among other methods, remote sensing is an effective means to understand the process and mechanism of sediment transport in estuarine-continental shelf. In this paper, we measured the surface suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in the eastern coast offshore of the Liaodong Peninsula, and then established a relationship between the measured SSC and the Remote Sensing Reflectance (Rrs) of GOCI images to retrieve the long-term spa-tio-temporal distribution of surface SSC (April 2011 to March 2017). The effect of tidal current, strong wind and flood on the variations of surface SSC is further analyzed. The SSC transport pattern from the Yalu River to the mud deposition along eastern coast offshore of Liaodong Peninsula is finally discussed. The results show that the distribution of the surface SSC in the study area displays great spatial differences. Near the estuary, the surface SSC is of highest value and is greater than 500 g/m³. While in other areas, the SSC value is less than 20 g/m³. Concerning the seasonal variation, the surface SSC value in the dry season is higher than that in the flood season, which is mainly due to the enhanced wind waves by strong winds in the dry season. Although the surface SSC value is low in the flood season, it still significantly increased during the flood period of the Yalu River catchment. In addition, as a typical small and medium-sized source-sink conveying system, the sediment transport mechanism from the Yalu River to the mud deposition along eastern coast offshore of Liaodong Peninsula is generally characterized by “deposit in summer and transport in winter”.