Study on the Impact of the Coastline Changes on Hydrodynamics in Xiangshan Bay

Abstract

Coastline changes have significant impacts on coastal hydrodynamics. Xiangshan Bay is a semi-closed and long-narrow bay located in Zhejiang Province, China. Its coastline has changed dramatically in recent decades; however, the variations in the small-scale hydrodynamics in the changed coastline areas have not been carefully studied. This study uses the Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) to design a set of control experiments and five sets of compared experiments targeting the areas with significant coastline changes in Xiangshan Bay over the past 21 years. It was found that the coastline changes at the mouth of the bay, such as areas near Meishan Island and Dasong, have a significant impact on both residual currents and tidal currents, changing the amplitudes and phase distributions of the tides. Coastline changes in the inner bay have lesser impacts on hydrodynamics, mainly affecting the small-scale areas in the vicinity.

Feasibility of tide simulation using nesting module of FVCOM—a case study of Xiangshan Bay

“…Since previous studies have repeatedly verified the accuracy of the Xiangshan Bay model by comparing the modeled tidal elevation with the observed tidal elevation [7] , this paper will not elaborate on the model calibration and mainly focus on the comparison among experiments with and without the nesting module.…”