Conversion of microplastics to flocs during estuarine mixing the Aras River with the Caspian Sea

Microplastics originated from various sources are carried by rivers into oceans, seas and lakes. In the last few years, the accumulation of microplastic particles in marine environments has been on the increase which causes irreversible damages to flora, fauna and human health. One of the most considerable processes in an estuary is the flocculation process. The flocculation process converts pollutants to flocs or greater particles. In the present study, the conversion of microplastics to flocs during estuarine mixing of the Aras River water and the Caspian Sea water is investigated for the first time. The results clearly show that a huge percentage of microplastics (99.95%) are converted to greater particles (> 5mm) due to the flocculation process. The maximum flocculation rate of microplastics (47.37%) is observed at the salinity of 0.25 ppt. Moreover, 35.71% of microplastics are flocculated at the salinity of 29 ppt. Salinity enhances the flocculation of microplastics.

Effective Diahaline Diffusivities in Estuaries

<p>The present study aims to estimate effective diahaline turbulent salinity fluxes and diffusivities in numerical model simulations of estuarine scenarios. The underlying method is based on a quantification of salinity mixing per salinity class, which is shown to be twice the turbulent salinity transport across the respective isohaline. Using this relation, the recently derived universal law of estuarine mixing, predicting that average mixing per salinity class is twice the respective salinity times the river run‐off, can be directly derived. The turbulent salinity transport is accurately decomposed into physical (due to the turbulence closure) and numerical (due to truncation errors of the salinity advection scheme) contributions. The effective diahaline diffusivity representative for a salinity class and an estuarine region results as the ratio of the diahaline turbulent salinity transport and the respective (negative) salinity gradient, both integrated over the isohaline area in that region and averaged over a specified period. With this approach, the physical (or numerical) diffusivities are calculated as half of the product of physical (or numerical) mixing and the isohaline volume, divided by the square of the isohaline area. The method for accurately calculating physical and numerical diahaline diffusivities is tested and demonstrated for a three‐dimensional idealized exponential estuary. As a major product of this study, maps of the spatial distribution of the effective diahaline diffusivities are shown for the model estuary.</p>

Impact of evaporation and precipitation on estuarine mixing

Recent studies could link the quantities of estuarine exchange flows to the volume-integrated mixing inside an estuary, where mixing is defined as the destruction of salinity variance. The existing mixing relations quantify mixing inside an estuary by the net boundary fluxes of volume, salinity, and salinity variance which are quantified as Knudsen or Total Exchange Flow bulk values. So far, river runoff is the only freshwater flux included and the freshwater exchange due to precipitation and evaporation is neglected. Yet, the latter is the driving force of inverse estuaries, which could not be described by the existing relations. To close this gap, this study considers evaporation and precipitation to complete the existing mixing relations by including cross-surface salinity variance transport. This allows decomposing the mixing into a riverine and a surface transport contribution. The improved relations are tested against idealized two-dimensional numerical simulations of different combinations of freshwater forcing. The mixing diagnosed from the model results agrees exactly with the derived mixing relation. An annual hind-cast simulation of the Persian Gulf is then used to test the mixing relations, both exact and approximated, e.g., long-term averaged, for a realistic inverse estuary. The results show that the annual mean mixing contributions of river discharge and evaporation are almost equal, although the freshwater transport due to evaporation is about one order of magnitude larger than the river runoff.

Influence of estuarine tidal mixing on structure and spatial scales of large river plumes

The Yenisei and Khatanga rivers are among the largest estuarine rivers that inflow to the Arctic Ocean. Discharge of the Yenisei River is 1 order of magnitude larger than that of the Khatanga River. However, spatial scales of buoyant plumes formed by freshwater runoff from the Yenisei and Khatanga gulfs are similar. This feature is caused by different tidal forcing in these estuaries, which have similar sizes, climate conditions, and geomorphology. The Khatanga discharge experiences strong tidal forcing that causes formation of a diluted bottom-advected plume in the Khatanga Gulf. This deep and weakly stratified plume has a small freshwater fraction and therefore occupies a large area on the shelf. The Yenisei Gulf, on the other hand, is a salt-wedge estuary that receives a large freshwater discharge and is less affected by tidal mixing due to low tidal velocities. As a result, the low-salinity and strongly stratified Yenisei plume has a large freshwater fraction and its horizontal size is relatively small. The results show that estuarine tidal mixing determines freshwater fraction in these river plumes, which governs their depth and area after they spread from estuaries to coastal sea. Therefore, the influence of estuarine mixing on spatial scales of a large river plume can be of the same importance as the roles of river discharge rate and wind forcing. In particular, plumes with similar areas can be formed by rivers with significantly different discharge rates, as illustrated by the Yenisei and Khatanga plumes.