Water quality information in the coastal region of Hong Kong and the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) is of great concern to the local community. Due to great landuse-landcover (LULC) changes with rapid industrialization and urbanization in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, water quality in the PRE has worsened during the last 20 years. Frequent red tide and harmful algal blooms have occurred in the...

SCHACHT, C. and LEMCKERT, C. J., 2007. A New Lagrangian-Acoustic Drogue (LAD) for Monitoring Flow Dynamics in an Estuary: a Quantification of its Water-Tracking Ability. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 50 (Proceedings of the 9th International Coastal Symposium), 420 – 426. Gold Coast, Australia, ISSN 0749.0208 We describe a novel in situ measuring drogue device developed for the investigation o...

Spaceborne chlorophyll indices based on red fluorescence (wavelength = 680 nm) and water leaving radiance (Lw) in the visible spectrum (i.e., 400–700 nm) were evaluated in the St Lawrence Estuary (SLE) during September of 2011. Relationships between chlorophyll concentration (chl) and fluorescence were constructed based on fluorescence line height (FLH) measurements derived from a compact laser...

Global climate change has resulted in a gradual sea level rise. Sea level rise can cause saline water to migrate upstream in estuaries and rivers, thereby threatening freshwater habitat and drinking-water supplies. In the present study, a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model was established to simulate salinity distributions and transport time scales in the Wu River estuary of central Taiwan. T...

The Pearl River, with an annual mean discharge rate of ~ 10,000 ms, has profound dynamic and ecological influences on the northern shelf of the South China Sea. A coastal ocean model is set up to simulate the circulation in the Pearl River Estuary and the neighboring coastal regions. In winter the Guangdong Coastal Current, which flows southwestward and passes the mouth of the estuary, forces t...

Coastlines are constantly changing due to both natural and anthropogenic forces, and climate change and associated sea level rise will continue to reshape coasts in the future. Erosion is not only apparent along oceanfront areas; shoreline dynamics in sheltered water bodies have also gained greater attention. Additional estuarine shoreline studies are needed to better understand and protect coa...

Few biogeographic studies of dinoflagellate cysts include the near-shore estuarine environment. We determine the effect of estuary type, biogeography, and water quality on the spatial distribution of organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts from the Northeast USA (Maine to Delaware) and Canada (Prince Edward Island). A total of 69 surface sediment samples were collected from 27 estuaries, from sites...

Ecosystem function measurements can enhance our understanding of nitrogen (N) delivery in coastal catchments across river and estuary ecosystems. Here, we contrast patterns of N cycling and export in two rivers, one heavily influenced by wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), in a coastal catchment of south Texas. We measured N export from both rivers to the estuary over 2 yr that encompass a seve...

The estuary of the Danshuei River, a hypoxic subtropical estuary, receives a high rate of untreated sewage effluent. The Ecopath with Ecosim software system was used to construct a mass-balanced trophic model for the estuary, and network analysis was used to characterize the structure and matter flow in the food web. The estuary model was comprised of 16 compartments, and the trophic levels var...

Nitrification, mediated by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), is important in global nitrogen cycling. In estuaries where gradients of salinity and ammonia concentrations occur, there may be differential selections for ammonia-oxidizer populations. The aim of this study was to examine the activity, abundance, and diversity of AOA and AOB in surface oxic sedime...