The concentration of human activities in coastal cities results in the increase of nutrient salts released into the coastal environment and is identified as a major environmental problem for coastal zone management. Large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are transported by rainwater-runoff from urban catchments to coastal zones during episodic rainfall events inducing eutrophication problems and increasing the risk of red tide occurrence. This study used a coupled model based on the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) and Environment Fluid Dynamic Code (EFDC) to simulate the rainfall-runoff pollution load and its effects on eutrophication in Shenzhen Bay, southern China. A storm event of 2014 was used to build the modeling scenarios and thus analyzed the spatial-temporal variation of the rainfall-runoff pollution. The results indicated that: (i) rainfall-runoff pollution loads accounted for 60–80% of the total pollution loads, and rainfall-runoff pollution can result in a short-term impact pollution load on the receiving seawater body; (ii) the transportation of nutrient salts in the coastal zone and the nutrient salts absorbing process by algae are at different times, which suggests urban rainfall-runoff pollution has evidently an effect on variation of the concentration of chlorophyll-A in the bay, and with increasing distance to the city, the seawater body is gradually less affected by rainfall-runoff pollution.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.