Author(s): Jia Quan Deng, Hui Deng
Linked Author(s): Jiaquan Deng
Keywords: Pearl River Estuary, sediment transport, estuary evolution, human activities, network-rivers
Abstract: The Pearl River consists of the West, North and East Rivers and the river Delta consists of more than 200 waterways which form a complex network-river estuary. The Pearl River discharges into the South China Sea through eight outlets. Both the upstream fresh water and the downstream tide are mixed and form back and forth flows in the estuary. Under the dual roles of both nature and human activities, the evolution of the rivers at the estuary is of complex. Based on analysis of the variations in water-sediment processes both in the network-rivers and the river-outlets, this paper explores the responses of the hydrodynamics, including the flow-diversion ratios at the first- and second-level flow-diversion nodes in the network rivers, and the flow-diversion ratios at outlets. The results show that in the recent three decades: (1) the water-sediment amount diverting towards south-east has increased in the network-rivers and hence, resulted in an increase of the flow distribution of the Lingdingyang Bay, and (2) the extensive human activities have dramatically changed the topographic and hydrodynamic features of the estuary, especially, the uncontrolled sediment mining from the network-rivers has caused a large amount of river-bed-sediment being excavated, and the large-scale reclamation of beaches or shoals along coastal areas outside the outlets has caused a significant influence on the evolution of the estuary
Year: 2017