Ya Ping Wang

Nanjing University | NJU · Department of Coastal Ocean Science

River cutoffs and oxbow lakes represent ubiquitous features in alluvial plains, shaped by unidirectional meandering flow. Extensive studies have been conducted on these features as their presence immediately decreases meander sinuosity and plays a significant role in the long‐term eco‐morphodynamic and sedimentary evolution of landscapes they carve...

Anthropogenic climate warming is predicted to increase the intensity of global tropical cyclones (TCs) on decadal timescales, known as the 'temperature-TC intensity' paradigm. However, no proxy is currently available to directly quantify TC intensity in the northwestern Pacific region over centennial to millennial timescales. Here, we reconstruct t...

Understanding wave processes within the coastal system is crucial for the appropriate design of coastal prevention engineering and offshore structures. To address the limitations of field observations and traditional methods, an array of pressure sensors and optical instruments were deployed across a shoreward intertidal flat consisting of the flui...

The initiation threshold of sediment motion, a key component in quantifying sediment transport, has potential link to intermittent turbulence bursts. Here, we elaborated in situ experiments on coastal sea bottom covered with cohesive sediments, to obtain intermittency parameters. The variable “waiting time” between turbulence bursts was utilized to...

Many large estuaries are threatened by intensifying hypoxia. However, due to the limited duration of available observations, uncertainties persist regarding the level of contemporary hypoxia intensity in a longer-term context and the relative contributions of climate versus human factors. Here we present sediment records for the hypoxia intensity a...

Deltas are threatened by erosion due to climate change and reduced sediment supply, but their response to these changes remains poorly quantified. We investigate the abandoned Yellow River delta that has transitioned from rapid growth to ongoing deterioration due to a river avulsion removing the sediment supply. Integrating bathymetric data, proces...

The transition between a tide-dominated estuary and a tide-dominated delta, which is observed in modern settings and repeatedly throughout the geologic record, is a critical process for understanding sea-level and environmental changes. This transition remains poorly documented, however, leaving a knowledge gap about the sedimentary and stratigraph...

Amidst escalating global changes and heightened human activities, tidal flats worldwide are facing a transition from accretion to erosion. In order to quantify the growth pattern of tidal flats and its response to changes in multiple external driving factors, here we established a geometric model, in combination with field surveys, to study the his...

With sea level rise (SLR), tidal nuisance flooding has become a growing threat, especially around estuaries with large tidal amplitudes. This study investigated how sea level change affects tides in Hangzhou Bay, a macro-tidal estuary with high SLR rate. By downscaling climate projections to a regional hydrodynamic model, the amplitude of primary t...

This study presents in-situ observations of fluid mud in the Yangtze Estuary via a bottom tripod. Six occurrences of periodic fluid muds (F1-F6) were observed at high slack water, with suspended sediment concentration (SSC) exceeding 10 kg/m³. The thickness of the fluid mud varied across the six occurrences, reaching a maximum of 0.32m. Notably, te...

Suspended sediment fronts (SSFs) significantly affect water quality, ecology, and geomorphological evolution of estuarine and coastal waters. Based on 10‐year suspended sediment concentration data derived from satellite images, the multiscale spatio‐temporal variability of SSFs in the Bohai Sea was studied. Frontal probability (FP) was used to quan...

Similarities in planform dynamics between tidal and fluvial meandering channels contrast with the apparent lack in coastal wetlands of lateral-migration features like meander cutoffs and oxbow lakes, which led to the broad interpretation that tidal and fluvial meanders differ morphodynamically. We analyzed meander neck cutoffs from diverse tidal an...

The Nansha Islands comprise the largest atoll archipelago in the South China Sea, accommodating 15% of global atolls. In contrast to reef flats found elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region that typically have grown close to modern sea level, a considerable portion of atoll rims there are composed of 10-20-m-deep reef flats. To better understand moder...

The assessment of river ecosystem health is crucial for improving river resilience, achieving ecological protection and rational utilization in the Yangtze Estuary region where there is high utilization of rivers and a high demand for quality rivers by Shanghai, the world's largest modern city. To assess the ecological health status of Yangtze Estu...

Subaqueous deltas are facing growing threats of erosion. Tropical cyclones (TCs), which are predicted to affect mid‐latitude estuaries more frequently with higher intensity in the future, can play an important role in subaqueous delta geomorphology change. Nevertheless, direct in situ measurement of TC‐induced bed elevation change (BEC) was rarely...

Salt marshes, which commonly exist on the upper tidal flat, provide a natural barrier against sea level rise and coastal storm. The extremely shallow water stages (water depth< 0.2 m), including the initial stage of flood tides and the last stage of ebb tides, can induce a significant impact on sediment dynamics of saltmarshes and associated tidal...

Suspended sediment fronts (SSFs) are an important sub-mesoscale phenomenon prevalent in estuaries, coasts, and continental shelf seas, affecting ocean hydrodynamics, fisheries, and ecology. Using archived (2011–2021) Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data, the spatial distributions and long-term variations in SSFs over the Yangtze Bank were q...

Temporal variations in tides are critical for ocean dynamics and engineering activities around coastal areas. Based on the data observed from 8 tide-gauge stations spanning 2 years (2016-2017), variations in principal (M 2 , S 2 , K 1 , O 1) and shallow-water (M 4 , MS 4 , M 6 , 2MS 6) tidal constituents in the Zhoushan Archipelagoes were studied b...

Understanding of erosion and accretion patterns over intertidal mudflats during storm periods is vital for the management and sustainable development of coastal areas. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the 2014 storm Fung-wong on the erosion and accretion patterns of the Nanhui intertidal mudflats in the Yangtze estuary, China, based on...

In this study, the effects of different bottom friction coefficient (BFC) parameterization schemes on the modelling of four principal tidal constituents (M2, S2, K1, O1 tides) in the macrotidal East China Seas were investigated by using a high-resolution model based on FVCOM (Finite Volume Community Ocean Model). The applied BFC schemes include: th...

Many of the world's mega‐river deltas are currently degrading due to a shortage of sediment supply feeding their construction. Here, using bathymetric and seismic data, the geomorphological/sedimentary evolution on and near a recently abandoned (1976 CE) Huanghe delta lobe is investigated. The delta front (DF) exhibits a lobe switching‐controlled p...

Delta evolution in the context of no sediment discharge has become a global concern, and an accretion-to-erosion conversion is occurring in the Yangtze estuary. This conversion could threaten Changjiang subaqueous delta development. Sediment erodibility is an important indicator of subaqueous delta vulnerability. However, the present and future ero...

Modulated by a host of complex processes, suspended sediment fronts (SSFs) on the inner shelf of the East China Sea persist strongly and vary notably. Using hourly suspended sediment concentration data collected by the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager over the period 2011–2021, a gradient‐based edge detection algorithm was implemented to extract SS...

Among all marine hazards, storm surges cause the most severe damage, and East Asia is one of the regions in the world most affected by tropical cyclones (TCs). With the increase in global mean temperature, the future changes of tropical cyclone (TC) activities are of great concern in East Asian countries. However, due to the inconsistency among dif...

The deflection of prodeltas caused by coastal currents is a significant contributor to deltaic asymmetry and clastic sediment masses on continental shelves. In the past, researchers supported that highly asymmetric deltas were usually unidirectional, or single-prodelta systems. Here, we present an exception in the Yellow River prodelta system. Usin...

Tidal flat system is composed of multiple sub-scale geomorphological units. We found a new mesoscale geomorphological unit on sand-mud mixed intertidal zone along China coast, which was defined as hummocky patches. Hummock patches are most developed in middle tidal flat, with horizontal magnitude of 10–20 m and vertical magnitude of ∼15 cm. Hummock...

Natural processes and anthropogenic activities are vital in dictating the amount and character of organic carbon (OC) input into large river deltas and adjacent shelves. Previous studies have indicated that sediment from the Huanghe River (HR) has significantly affected the formation of the northern Yangtze River subaqueous delta (YRD) over the pas...

Small yellow croaker (Larimichthys polyactis), a benthic fish species widely distributed in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, plays an important role in the fishery catch of coastal countries. A large amount of dead small yellow croaker floated on the sea surface near 30.2°N, 125.3°E in the East China Sea on 19 February 2017, and more than 9,000 kilogra...

Long-term and high-frequency observing of the oceanic bottom boundary layer was implemented using a seabed-mounted tripod equipped with multiple high-frequency instruments in a semidiurnal tide-dominated channel around the Zhoushan Islands, China. The estimated turbulent parameters, e.g., turbulent intensity, friction velocity, and bottom drag coef...

Tropical-cyclone-induced waves in coastal waters are considered to greatly influence sediment resuspension. Much attention has been paid to the effect of mixed waves (wind waves and swells) during tropical cyclone events. However, little is known about the difference between the effects of swell (driven by offshore tropical cyclones) and wind waves...

Frequency changes in intense typhoons are of great concern to modern society. However, current understanding of the influence of climate on typhoon activity on the millennial scale is restricted by the sparseness of pre-observational reconstructions in the north-western Pacific. This study presents a 5500 year long typhoon record from the Jiangsu c...

In many estuaries, current velocity, suspended sediment concentration (SSC), and water depth have notable flood-ebb asymmetries in magnitude or duration. Such asymmetries can make marked impact on estuarine sediment transport and require in-depth analysis of the underlying mechanism. Based on field measurement over a neap-spring cycle in the Changj...

Variations in suspended sediment concentrations (SSCs) in coastal areas affect both geomorphology and biological environment. In this study, more than 82,000 surface-water samples have been collected twice daily at 10 stations in the Yangtze River Estuary and adjacent sea (YRE–AS) between 1990 and 2020 to study how the SSC has varied in response to...

The relationship between storm activity and global warming remains uncertain. To better understand storm-climate relationships, coastal lagoon deposits are increasingly being investigated because they could provide high-resolution storm records long enough to cover past climate changes. However, site-specific sediment dynamics and high barriers may...

Tidal duration asymmetry (TDA) in Zhoushan Archipelago (ZA), East China, was investigated with a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model based on the finite volume community ocean model (FVCOM). The model was evaluated against observed sea surface elevations, currents, and harmonic constants, and the evaluation indicated that the model agreed well wit...

Fluid mud plays an important role in the maintenance of the estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM) and makes a significant contribution to estuarine sediment transport. A seabed tripod system and a shipboard vertical profile were deployed to explore the spatial-temporal variation and mechanism of fluid mud in the ETM of the Yangtze Estuary. The near-bed...

Classical estuary circulation theory states that in the longitudinal direction of an estuary there exists a single circulation with landward, near-bottom, and seaward, near-surface flows; however, the situation becomes complicated with the presence of a river mouth bar. Here we conducted tidal-cycle observations in the South Passage of the Yangtze...

Growing evidence has suggested that human activities could cause significant changes in marine sedimentation processes. The spatio-temporal response of sedimentary environment to human activities, however, remains unclear. Here, we present new evidence of sedimentary changes in the East China Sea over the past three decades (i.e., 1984–2016 CE) by...

Understanding mechanisms of suspended sediment transport in estuaries is critical for predicting estuarine geomorphic evolution, managing navigation and fisheries, and monitoring the health of estuarine ecosystems. Yet monitoring suspended sediment transport in estuaries is challenging due to the influences of both riverine and marine processes, an...

In this paper, an improved numerical scheme is developed to estimate the initial conditions (ICs) based on a three-dimensional suspended sediment transport model (3D SSTM) with adjoint data assimilation, and the method is then applied to Hangzhou Bay as an example. Specifically, the ICs are estimated by assimilating artificial observations in twin...

Huang, Y.-G.; Yang, S.-L.; Yang, H.-F.; Wang, Y.-P.; Dai, Z.-J.; Shi, B.-W., and Wu, Q.-Y., 2021. Decadal decreases of suspended sediment concentrations within the Yangtze River Estuary: A response to human impacts. Journal of Coastal Research, 37(4), 852–863. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Changes in suspended sediment concentration (SSC)...

The bottom friction coefficient (BFC) is critical for precisely determining hydrodynamic conditions and sediment transport rates, which are important for scientific research and coastal ocean engineering. The BFC varies spatially and temporally, as indicated by in situ observations, but it is difficult to accurately set this parameter in tidal mode...

The variations and dynamics of suspended sediment in the coastal waters around the Zhoushan Archipelago are complex due to strong tidal dynamics. This study aims to delineate the tide-induced variability of surface suspended sediment and reveal its mechanisms in the Zhoushan Archipelago based on Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data. Suspend...

The flocculation process of cohesive sediment impacts upon estuaries and tidal flats by affecting the sediment dynamics, modifying the biogeochemical exchanges, and playing an essential role in coastal ecosystems and geomorphologic evolution. To understand the roles of biological activity on flocculation processes in aquaculture areas, here we unde...

Topographic/bathymetric conditions of the continental shelf can significantly influence the long-term growth of river deltas. In particular, these conditions constrain the accommodation space for sedimentation in the deltaic areas. In this study, we use a conceptual geometric model to evaluate the role played by this factor, on the basis of the pri...

Climate change and human activity have exerted significant influences on the sediment load and channel morphology of the Changjiang River system, China. However, our knowledge of their influence on flood regime on the centennial to millennial timescales remains limited, and this is mainly because of the difficulty in directly determining the long-t...

Storm and tsunamis boulders may be distinguished by analyzing the wave energy dissipation patterns. Here we use the principles of storm energy conservation and the transport by storm-induced flow, to establish a theoretical distribution pattern of storm boulders on a coral reef flat. The movement of coral boulders with different sizes during a stor...

Accurate determination of past flooding characteristics is necessary to effectively predict the future flood disaster risk and dominant controls. However, understanding the effects of environmental forcing on past flooding frequency and magnitude is difficult owing to the deficiency of observations (data available for less than 10 % of the world's...

Internal waves are widespread in oceans and play an important role in mixing. In this study, we observed some oscillations of pycnoclines that are thought to be caused by internal waves by analyzing the vertical and temporal variations of current speed and density during ebbs of the neap tides in the south channel of the Yangtze River (Changjiang)...

The vertical density gradients of salinity and suspended sediment concentration (SSC) cause stratification in estuaries, which play a vital role in the turbulence structure, water mixing, and sediment transport. To investigate the effect of stratification, especially SSC-induced stratification, on maintaining the estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM),...

The residual sand (D > 62.5 μm) transport (RST) refers to the tidally averaged rate of horizontal sand transport. Albeit much smaller than the peak rates, it determines the morphological evolution. The analytical expression for the tide-induced RST has been reported in the condition of one-dimensional tidal currents by van de Kreeke and Robaczewska...

The workshop series on sediment dynamics of muddy coasts and estuaries focuses on international frontier issues and major social needs, such as land-sea interactions, estuarine and coastal monitoring, numerical simulation, sediment transport and its biogeochemical effects. The Third Workshop was held in Qingdao, China, in November 2018, hosted by t...

Marine sediment is the final sink of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from river input and atmospheric deposition. Such kind of pollutant cycles in the marine environment is usually controlled by hydrodynamic conditions. Many previous studies have explored how ocean currents influence pollutant distribution, but very few studies have focused...

Microphytobenthos influence sediment dynamics via their growth and covering on the surface sediment of saltmarshes. To understand the sediment transport and morphological changes resulting from microphytobenthos in a saltmarsh, two parallelly located sites were established to measure the hydrodynamic forces, sediment characteristics, and microphyto...

Meretrix meretrix (M. meretrix) are commonly found on tidal flats along the global coastlines. They are believed to potentially affect the sedimentary processes and thus morphological dynamics on the tidal flat. Their effects on sediment erosion and deposition, however, are not well quantitatively understood. To fill this gap, we conducted an integ...

The radial sand ridges found off the coast of Jiangsu (China) are major morphological features in the southern Yellow Sea and undergo rapid changes in morphology. Despite numerous observational and modeling efforts, the physical processes controlling sediment transport and associated morphological evolution over the ridges remain not well understoo...

Coastal deltaic deposits are the primary locations for sediment storage on Earth, and quantifying their source contributions is a critical prerequisite for delineating S2S patterns in marginal seas. In most cases, quantification for the contribution by fine-grained sediments (i.e., particle size < 63 µm) is considered to be representative to constr...

The Karman-Prandtl logarithm formula of velocity distribution has been widely used to depict flow structures and estimate parameters including bed roughness length and friction velocity in coastal tidal bottom boundary layers. However, the basic assumptions are of homogeneous flow, but the effects of stratification should be taken into account. Her...

Continental shelf islands are contributors of terrestrial sediment supply to shelf regions, and the sediment flux from these islands shall be quantified. We calculated the sediment flux of continental shelf islands in the southeastern China using two empirical equations under two preconditions. The first, the sediment load/yield of the islands has...

The bottom friction velocity (U*), which controls seabed erosion and deposition, plays a critical role in sediment transport in tidal coastal bottom boundary layers. Approaches have been proposed to calculate U*, including the log profile (LP) estimation, the direct covariance (COV) measurement, and the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) method. Howeve...

Wave height, pressure and orbital velocity statistics, as influenced by the factor of water depth, are analyzed on the basis of five data sets collected in situ from two intertidal sites with a mean water depth of 0.8–2.7 m and three inner shelf sites (water depths 14.6–27.6 m). Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (ADVs) were used to measure instantaneou...

Accelerating sea-level rise and decreasing riverine sediment supply are widely considered to lead to global losses of deltaic marshes and their valuable ecosystem services. However, little is known about the degree to which the related erosion of the seaward delta front can provide sediments to sustain salt marshes. Here, we present data from the m...

How climate controls tropical cyclone variability has critical implications for modern human society but is not well understood due to the short length of observational records. To probe this knowledge gap, we present a synthesis of intense typhoon activity from the northwestern Pacific over the past 2000 years, which is supported by a new, well-re...

Current characteristics and vertical variations during summer and autumn in the southern East China Sea were investigated by measuring current profile, tide, wind, and wave data for 90 d from July 28 to October 25, 2015. Our results are: (1) The current was mainly a (clockwise) rotating flow, displaying reciprocating flow characteristics, and verti...

Abstract. Accurate determination of past flooding characteristics is necessary to effectively predict future flood disaster risk and the dominant controls. However, understanding the role of environmental forcing on past flooding frequency and magnitude is difficult due to the deficiency of observations and too short measurement time series. Here,...

The activity of benthic organisms can strongly influence sediment dynamics in an intertidal flat. However, few studies have conducted a quantitative assessments of the effect of benthic organisms on erosion‐accretion processes under field conditions. The aim of this study was to quantify the effects of the benthic clam Meretrix meretrix Linnaeus (M...

In this work, the spatial and temporal sensitivities of the significant wave height (SWH) to ten key parameters in the SWAN model under typhoon conditions are assessed through comprehensive observations at four buoy stations along the eastern coast of China. Experiments were conducted using wind forcing based on Typhoon Chan-hom, which made landfal...

River deltas as an important sub-system of the coastal zone are subjected to a series of rapid changes in response to global changes and human activities. This therefore affects the sustainability of the economy and society. The Changjiang River is one of the largest and most highly-developed economic regions in China. This delta system not only pl...

Fine-grained sediments suspended in coastal waters play an important role in submarine topography evolution and associated environment changes. The convergence of suspended sediments concentrated near the seabed results in high sediment concentration, and contributes significantly to sediment transport. In order to investigate the mechanism trigger...

The following are errors in the original article: Ya Ping Wang’s first name was incorrect. It is correct as shown here. There is an error in Eq. 2. Following is the corrected equation.

Tidal flats, where significant land‐ocean interactions take place, are often abstracted as a cross‐shore bed profile with sediment zonation from the lower sand flat to the upper mud flat. However, in addition to cross‐shore tidal currents, the impact of the alongshore components on cross‐shore sediment transport, morphological evolution, and sedime...

Many rivers are facing human-induced system regime shifts that have great environmental, ecological and social implications, necessitating an increasing need to quantify the human influence on sediment properties and their impacts on the source-to-sink system of marginal seas. The Huanghe and Changjiang Rivers have experienced a dramatic reduction...