Flooding sedimentation at the Yellow River mouth, China

Chinese Huanghe (Yellow River) provides an extreme case of human controlled large river system. Since 2002, a unique Water-Sediment Regulation （WSR） regime was implemented annually through Xiaolangdi Dam to buffer pool infilling and scour the hanging riverbed. This involves transfers of large-volume of water and sediment between reservoirs, becoming a human-made flooding event. 37 surface sediments 8 box cores sampled during the 2018 WSR were analyzed for grain-size, C/N, ¹³C, radionuclides, etc. Satellite images together with high-resolution bathymetric data were incorporated to depict the flooding sedimentation at the river mouth. The results show that ⁷Be and ²¹⁰Pb activity is pretty low, implying its incapability of tracing flood sediments at the Huanghe River mouth. The results also uncover that a majority of the sediment was deposited in the vicinity of the river mouth where the water depth is less than 15 m. Two depocenters with a maximum thickness of 9 m were formed expanding within a very restricted area, which was largely controlled by tidal currents.