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Spatial Distribution and Physical Controls of the Spring Algal Blooming Off the Changjiang River Estuary

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Abstract

The Changjiang River discharges huge amounts of nutrients, which cause frequent harmful algal blooms off its estuary. By analyzing historical and in situ observational data, this study aimed to determine the distribution and physical controls of these blooms. The results indicated that phytoplankton bloomed within the 30–50 m isobaths south of the Changjiang River mouth, with several high-value centers. South of the river mouth, the river plume front propagated along the coast as bottom-trapped river plume, which reached the bottom along the 25–30 m isobaths. The algae bloomed between the locations of the bottom and surface fronts. The surface front determined the seaward limit of the nutrient-rich river-influenced water and set the outer boundary of algal blooming; the latter separated the stratified (hence less turbid) offshore surface water from the well-mixed thus turbid nearshore surface water, forming the shoreward limit of the algal blooming due to high turbidity. The surface plume front was relatively unstable compared with the bottom. The surface plume front relaxes around the bathymetric irregularities, which enlarges the distance between the plume’s surface and bottom fronts, providing a larger area favorable to algal blooming. Consequently, several high chlorophyll-a centers developed around the bathymetric irregularities. East and northeast of the river mouth, the river plume floated above ambient seawater as a surface-trapped river plume. A subsurface chlorophyll-a maximum was observed above the pycnocline in the far-field plume area, which descended gradually to ~ 10 m in the offshore direction. The associated dynamical mechanism was also discussed.

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Acknowledgements

XSL acknowledges the support from Jiangsu Chair Professorship and the 2015 Jiangsu Program of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group. The data are available upon formal request to the correspondence author. The authors would express sincere thanks to Dr. Yeping Yuan from Zhejiang University for her help in calculating the Thorpe scale and to the crew of R/V Zhehaike I for their assistance in sampling the data. The constructive comments from three anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.

Funding

This study was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41576088 and 41776101), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFC1402202), and the research foundation of State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (Grant No. 2015KYYW04).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yihe Wang, Hui Wu, Lei Gao & Fang Shen

  2. School of Marine Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Hui Wu

  3. School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    X. San Liang

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  1. Yihe Wang
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Correspondence to Hui Wu.

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Communicated by Charles Simenstad

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Wang, Y., Wu, H., Gao, L. et al. Spatial Distribution and Physical Controls of the Spring Algal Blooming Off the Changjiang River Estuary. Estuaries and Coasts 42, 1066–1083 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00545-x

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