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Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea

Internal solitary waves (ISWs) can cause strong vertical and horizontal currents and turbulent mixing in the ocean. These processes affect sediment and pollutant transport, acoustic transmissions and man-made structures in the shallow and deep oceans. Previous studies of the role of ISWs in suspendi...

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Autores principales: Jia, Yonggang, Tian, Zhuangcai, Shi, Xuefa, Liu, J. Paul, Chen, Jiangxin, Liu, Xiaolei, Ye, Ruijie, Ren, Ziyin, Tian, Jiwei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6702154/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31431636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47886-y
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author Jia, Yonggang
Tian, Zhuangcai
Shi, Xuefa
Liu, J. Paul
Chen, Jiangxin
Liu, Xiaolei
Ye, Ruijie
Ren, Ziyin
Tian, Jiwei
author_facet Jia, Yonggang
Tian, Zhuangcai
Shi, Xuefa
Liu, J. Paul
Chen, Jiangxin
Liu, Xiaolei
Ye, Ruijie
Ren, Ziyin
Tian, Jiwei
author_sort Jia, Yonggang
collection PubMed
description Internal solitary waves (ISWs) can cause strong vertical and horizontal currents and turbulent mixing in the ocean. These processes affect sediment and pollutant transport, acoustic transmissions and man-made structures in the shallow and deep oceans. Previous studies of the role of ISWs in suspending seafloor sediments and forming marine nepheloid layers were mainly conducted in shallow-water environments. In summer 2017, we observed at least four thick (70–140 m) benthic nepheloid layers (BNLs) at water depths between 956 and 1545 m over continental slopes in the northern South China Sea. We found there was a good correlation between the timing of the ISW packet and variations of the deepwater suspended sediment concentration (SSC). At a depth of 956 m, when the ISW arrived, the near-bottom SSC rapidly increased by two orders of magnitude to 0.62 mg/l at 8 m above the bottom. At two much deeper stations, the ISW-induced horizontal velocity reached 59.6–79.3 cm/s, which was one order of magnitude more than the seafloor contour currents velocity. The SSC, 10 m above the sea floor, rapidly increased to 0.10 mg/l (depth of 1545 m) and 1.25 mg/l (depth of 1252 m). In this study, we found that ISWs could suspend much more sediments on deepwater areas than previously thought. Specifically, we estimated that ISWs could induce and suspend 787 Mt/yr of sediment from shelf to deep-sea areas of the northern South China Sea. The total amount of sediment resuspended by shoaling ISWs was 2.7 times that of river-derived sediment reaching the northern South China Sea. This accounted for 6.1% of the global river-discharged sediment (16.4% of that from Asian rivers) transported to the sea.
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spelling pubmed-67021542019-08-23 Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea Jia, Yonggang Tian, Zhuangcai Shi, Xuefa Liu, J. Paul Chen, Jiangxin Liu, Xiaolei Ye, Ruijie Ren, Ziyin Tian, Jiwei Sci Rep Article Internal solitary waves (ISWs) can cause strong vertical and horizontal currents and turbulent mixing in the ocean. These processes affect sediment and pollutant transport, acoustic transmissions and man-made structures in the shallow and deep oceans. Previous studies of the role of ISWs in suspending seafloor sediments and forming marine nepheloid layers were mainly conducted in shallow-water environments. In summer 2017, we observed at least four thick (70–140 m) benthic nepheloid layers (BNLs) at water depths between 956 and 1545 m over continental slopes in the northern South China Sea. We found there was a good correlation between the timing of the ISW packet and variations of the deepwater suspended sediment concentration (SSC). At a depth of 956 m, when the ISW arrived, the near-bottom SSC rapidly increased by two orders of magnitude to 0.62 mg/l at 8 m above the bottom. At two much deeper stations, the ISW-induced horizontal velocity reached 59.6–79.3 cm/s, which was one order of magnitude more than the seafloor contour currents velocity. The SSC, 10 m above the sea floor, rapidly increased to 0.10 mg/l (depth of 1545 m) and 1.25 mg/l (depth of 1252 m). In this study, we found that ISWs could suspend much more sediments on deepwater areas than previously thought. Specifically, we estimated that ISWs could induce and suspend 787 Mt/yr of sediment from shelf to deep-sea areas of the northern South China Sea. The total amount of sediment resuspended by shoaling ISWs was 2.7 times that of river-derived sediment reaching the northern South China Sea. This accounted for 6.1% of the global river-discharged sediment (16.4% of that from Asian rivers) transported to the sea. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-08-20 /pmc/articles/PMC6702154/ /pubmed/31431636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47886-y Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Jia, Yonggang
Tian, Zhuangcai
Shi, Xuefa
Liu, J. Paul
Chen, Jiangxin
Liu, Xiaolei
Ye, Ruijie
Ren, Ziyin
Tian, Jiwei
Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title_full Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title_fullStr Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title_full_unstemmed Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title_short Deep-sea Sediment Resuspension by Internal Solitary Waves in the Northern South China Sea
title_sort deep-sea sediment resuspension by internal solitary waves in the northern south china sea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6702154/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31431636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47886-y
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