Impacts of anthropogenic inputs on the hypoxia and oxygen dynamics in the Pearl River Estuary
Abstract. In summer, the Pearl River Estuary experiences hypoxia, largely driven by the high input of freshwater with low dissolved oxygen (DO) and abundant nutrients and particulate organic carbon from the Pearl River network. In this study, we used a well-validated coupled physical-biogeochemical model to study the response of hypoxia and oxygen dynamics to variations of anthropogenic inputs (i.e. DO, nutrients, and particulate organic carbon). Model results showed that hypoxia in the Pearl River Estuary was confined to the shelf off the Modaomen sub-estuary with a hypoxic area of ~ 200 km2 mainly due to the combined effect of re-aeration and sediment oxygen demand. Numerical experiments suggested that hypoxia in the Pearl River Estuary was most sensitive to riverine inputs of particulate organic carbon , followed by DO concentrations and nutrients. Specifically, a 50 % decrease (increase) in riverine input of particulate organic carbon led to a 47 % decrease (64 % increase) in hypoxic area, with the sediment oxygen demand and water column production being the two most important processes contributing to the changes in DO concentration and hypoxic extent. Changes in the riverine inputs of DO and nutrients had little impact on the simulated hypoxia because of the buffering effects of re-aeration, i.e. the re-aeration compensated the changes in surface apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) associated with river-induced variations of oxygen source and sink processes. The Pearl River Estuary features shallow waters (with averaged depth of 10 m) where oxygen provided by the re-aeration could penetrate to bottom waters via vertical diffusion that largely offset the changes in DO contributed by other oxygen source and sink processes. This study highlights the importance of re-aeration in determining the hypoxic extent and the buffering effects of re-aeration in reducing hypoxia variability in shallow estuary.