Sedimentation rates in the Yellow Sea based on 210Pb and 137Cs

²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs have been widely used as tracers to estimate sediment ages and sedimentation rates, enhancing the understanding of geoscientific processes. The Yellow Sea, located between the western coast of Korea and the northeast coast of China, has an average depth of 50 m and is influenced significant boundary inputs from various sources such as atmospheric deposition, river runoff, and submarine groundwater discharge. In the Yellow Sea sediments, the concentrations of ²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs were found to be twice and six times higher, respectively, in dumping sites compared to other regions. Based on the ²¹⁰Pb distributions, the overall sediment rates was found to be 0.30 to 0.49 (avg. 0.35±0.23) cm yr^-1 on average, which is much higher than that of the East Sea. This calculated sedimentation rate also agreed well with that estimated by ¹³⁷Cs in some stations. Overall, our results imply that the substantially high sedimentation rates in the Yellow Sea could be due to the massive inputs from the various sources from surrounding continents, especially the dumping site.