Addition of the increased anthropogenic nitrogen (NO x and NH y) emitted from northeast Asian countries to the Yellow and East China seas and coastal waters around Korea has resulted in an unparalleled increase in the nitrate (N) concentration relative to the phosphate (P) and silicate (Si) concentrations in the upper ocean. We found that for the Yellow Sea the increase in N over P was largely explained by increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition, whereas for the northern East China Sea, downstream of the Changjiang River plume, the trend in N increase relative to P was more associated with a change in the combined input of nutrients from atmospheric deposition and riverine discharges. In contrast, the dynamics of the N to P relationship in the southern East China Sea was largely controlled by a change in the intrusion intensity of the Kuroshio Current, which has a low N : P ratio. The disproportionate and persistent input of nutrients to the marine waters of this region over the past four decades has transformed extensive areas from being N deficient to being P deficient, and has concurrently decreased the concentration of Si relative to N. In coastal waters around Korea in particular, these shifts in the nutrient regime have been accompanied by a change from diatom-dominated to dinoflagellatedominated blooms. Given the complexity of coastal ecosystems, the associations between changes in nutrient regimes and biological changes need to be investigated in other coastal areas receiving increasing loads of anthropogenic nitrogen.

The temporal dynamics of the concentrations of nitrate (N), phosphate (P), and the N:P ratio in the upper water column (200–600 m) of the Mediterranean (MED) Sea were investigated using observational data (~123,100 data points) collected between 1985 and 2014. The studied variables were found to evolve similarly in the western and eastern MED Sea. In both basins, the N concentration increased during the first part of the observational period (1985–1998), and the temporal trend of N was broadly consistent with the history of riverine and atmospheric nitrogen input from populated areas in Europe, with a lag period of 20 years. In subsequent years, the N concentration was high and relatively constant between 1998 and 2005, after which N decreased gradually, although the decreasing trend was indistinct in the western basin. In particular, the trend of constant then declining N after 1998 is consistent with the history of pollutant nitrogen emissions from the European continent, allowing a 20 year lag following the introduction of regulation of pollutant nitrogen in the 1970s. The three‐phase temporal transition in P in both basins was more consistent with the riverine phosphorus input, with a lag period of 20 years. Our analysis indicates that the recent dynamics of N and P in the upper MED Sea has been sensitive to the dynamics of anthropogenic nitrogen and phosphorus input from atmospheric deposition and rivers.

We estimated the seasonal extremes in pH and the aragonite saturation state (Ωarag) for the Yellow Sea over the past 30 years using recent (2015–2018) carbonate data sets, along with historical data sets of surface N and bottom water dissolved O2 concentrations. The rate of increase in surface N was assumed to determine the postbloom surface dissolved inorganic C concentration resulting from the complete utilization of N by phytoplankton, while the decrease in bottom water O2 was assumed to reflect the prebloom surface C, as a consequence of C‐rich bottom water (resulting from the oxidation of greater amounts of organic matter transported from the surface) being brought to the surface. With the increasing loads of anthropogenic N, the net community metabolism (an increase in organic matter production at the surface and subsequent remineralization at the seafloor) has lowered the seasonal amplitude of pH by 0.14 but increased the amplitude of Ωarag by 0.8.

This study was conducted to identify the geographical origin of soybeans in Cheonggukjang by analyzing its organic components and inorganic elements with Fourier transform near-infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIRS) and with energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. For method development, 280 samples from various regions were collected and analyzed. The discriminant accuracy for the developed methods was 97.5% for FT-NIRS and 98.0% for ED-XRF with multivariate statistical analysis. A validation test confirmed the discriminant accuracy to be 96.3% for FT-NIRS and 95.0% for ED-XRF. Overall, the results showed that methods using FT-NIRS and ED-XRF could be used to identify the geographical origin of Cheonggukjang.

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