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Submarine groundwater discharge and seasonal hypoxia off the Changjiang River Estuary

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  • Marine Chemistry
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Abstract

Hypoxia is a common phenomenon in the sea adjacent to the Changjiang River Estuary (CJE), one of the global major estuaries. Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is a widely recognized pathway for terrestrial materials entering the sea, and has been found to be significant off the CJE. We used a 222Rn mass balance model to estimate the SGD fluxes off the CJE and showed that it is linked to seasonal dissolved oxygen (DO) variations. Average SGD fluxes were estimated to be (0.012 ± 0.010) m3/(m2·d) in winter, (0.034 ± 0.015) m3/(m2·d) in summer, and (0.020 ± 0.010) m3/(m2·d) in autumn. We found a significant negative correlation between DO concentrations and SGD rates with groundwater discharge being highest in the summer flood season. In addition, distribution patterns of SGD and hypoxia zones in summer are spatially overlapped, indicating that SGD is an important contributor to summer hypoxia in this region.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Han Zhang, Haiming Nan, Shasha Song for their assistance during sample collection. Samples were collected onboard of R/V Runjiang1 and R/V Zheyuke implementing the open research cruises supported by Natural Science Foundation of China ship time sharing project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Frontiers Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System/Key Laboratory of Marine Chemistry Theory and Technology of Ministry of Education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Tianyi Zhu, Bochao Xu, Xiaoyi Guo, Qingzhen Yao & Zhigang Yu

  2. Laboratory for Marine Ecology and Environmental Science, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Tianyi Zhu, Bochao Xu, Xiaoyi Guo, Qinsheng Wei, Qingzhen Yao & Zhigang Yu

  3. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Tianyi Zhu & Xiaoyi Guo

  4. Academy of the Future Ocean, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Tianyi Zhu

  5. Key Laboratory of Marine Eco-Environmental Science and Technology, First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Qinsheng Wei

  6. Research Center for Monitoring and Environmental Sciences, Taihu Basin and East China Sea Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Authority, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Shanghai, 200120, China

    Ergang Lian & Pengxia Liu

  7. State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Ergang Lian

  8. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA

    William C. Burnett

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  1. Tianyi Zhu
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  2. Bochao Xu
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Correspondence to Bochao Xu.

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Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 42130410 and U22A20580; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under contract No. 202341002.

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Zhu, T., Xu, B., Guo, X. et al. Submarine groundwater discharge and seasonal hypoxia off the Changjiang River Estuary. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 42, 125–133 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-023-2256-9

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