Coastline change of the Yellow River estuary and its response to the sediment and runoff (1976-2005)

The dramatic decreases in runoff and sediment have great impacts on erosion-deposition variation in the Yellow River estuary. This study extracted mean high tide lines of the Yellow River estuary from MSS, TM and ETM+ data from 1976 to 2005, and explored relationships between the accretion-erosion of land and the runoff and sediment load of the Yellow River. The results showed that the general pattern of accretion-erosion of the entire estuary was divided into four stages: rapid accretion stage (1976-1986), accretion-erosion adjustment stage (1986-1996), slow erosion stage (1996-2003), and slow accretion stage (2003-present). For maintaining the annual balance of the entire estuary (1976-2005) and Q8 estuary (most recent course of the Qingshuigou estuary from 1996 to 2005), critical annual runoff and sediment load are 140.36 x 10(8) m(3) year(-1) and 3.31 x 10(8) t year(-1), and 85.0 x 10(8) m(3) year(-1) and 1.63 x 10(8) t year(-1),respectively. In the future decades, the Q8 estuary is likely to maintain its shape and area balance or have a little accretion, but the entire estuary could be in an eroding state. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.