Study on Spatiotemporal Evolution of the Yellow River Delta Coastline from 1976 to 2020

Abstract

The Yellow River Delta in China is the most active one for sea–land changes over all deltas worldwide, and its coastline evolution is critical to urban planning and environmental sustainability in coastal areas. Existing studies rarely used yearly temporal resolution, and lack more detailed and quantitative analysis of coastline evolution characteristics. This paper used visual interpretation to extract the coastline of the Yellow River Delta in year interval Landsat images for 45 years from 1976 to 2020, and analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of the coastline evolution through statistical methods such as calculating change values and change rate. The main results are as follows: (1) overall, the coastline of the Yellow River Delta presented a spatial pattern involving northern landward retreat and southern seaward expansion. Since 1990, the Yellow River Delta has entered a period of decline. In addition, the length of the artificial coastline increased by about 55 km; (2) in the Qingshuigou region, the land area and the coastline length increased first and then stabilized. The southeastern part of the Qingshuigou was in a state of erosion, while the northeastern part was expanding toward the sea along the north direction; (3) in the Diaokou region, the land area has been decreasing, but the reduction rate has gradually slowed down. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) through the research on the evolution model and mechanism of the coastline of the Yellow River Delta, it was found that human factors and natural factors were the two major driving factors that affect the evolution of the coastline; (2) a river branch appeared in the northern part of the Qingshuigou region in 2014 and became a major branch in 2020, which would affect the development of the coastal region of Chengdao. This study is important for better understanding the evolution pattern of the Yellow River Delta coastline and will help to provide guidance for coastline management and resource exploitation.

Concerns about data linking delta land gain to human action

“…2a,d). Our buffer yields +2.15 km 2 /yr, similar to that published for the same period 11 , which identifies this delta among the fastest growing on Earth. Whether Yellow River data are corrected for true land change or removed, the R 2 is 0 with Q d river-Q p river, 0 with Q d river/Q p river and 0.09 (p-value: 0.2) for Q d river/Q p river using binned data, which is not statistically significant (Fig.…”

Spatiotemporal coastline variations in the Pearl River Estuary and the relationship with multiple human disturbances

“…By contrast, the sediment input to the Yangtze River estuary was significantly reduced due to the operation of the Three Gorges Reservoir, but the Yangtze River coastline advanced seaward instead under the construction of coastal projects (Chu et al, 2013). The Yellow River estuary is greatly affected by land reclamation, and the tidal flats along the southern and northern coastlines in 2019 declined to 43% and 27% of their original area in 1984, respectively, resulting in a continuous reduction in tidal width (Li et al, 2021). This indicates that anthropogenic activities in both watersheds and coastal areas can significantly affect the estuarine coastline variation.…”

Fusion Classification of HSI and MSI Using a Spatial-Spectral Vision Transformer for Wetland Biodiversity Estimation

“…The Yellow River delta wetland locates in Shandong Province, China 118 • 33 -119 • 20 E, 37 • 35 -38 • 12 N. The Yellow River delta wetland is an important ecological functional area in the Bohai Sea, while the estuarine wetland is a typical area [36]. In particular, the intertidal zone of the Yellow River estuary wetland involves rich salt marsh vegetation and benthos.…”