Influence of bathymetry evolution on position of tidal shear front and hydrodynamic characteristics around the Yellow River estuary

Abstract

A three dimensional numerical model based on the hydrodynamic module of finite-volume coastal ocean (FVCOM) was established for the Yellow River estuary. The model has been calibrated by observed data and proved to be suitable to reflect the hydrodynamic force in the research area. We employed the model to simulate the tidal shear front off the Yellow River estuary and analyzed the formation, spread and duration of two different types of shear front. To examine the effect of bathymetry evolution on the position of tidal shear front, subaqueous bathymetry of the Yellow River estuary was changed according to the changing patterns obtained from the past few years. Tidal shear front was modeled on both the original and the changed bathymetry. The results show that the position of shear front moved from a shallow to a deep area due to the deposition of bathymetry. The influence of bathymetry evolution on hydrodynamic characteristics including the distribution of salinity and the movement of particles was studied. We found the dispersion areas of low salinity became larger after changing bathymetry and the particles on the surface, middle and bottom layer are able to move further both north and west of Laizhou Bay on the changed bathymetry.

Keywords

Yellow River estuary / shear front / hydrodynamic force / bathymetry evolution / salinity

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No.2013CB430403), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51179025 and 50839001). The authors would also like to thank the developers of FVCOM for the open access to their code. The authors are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg