Abstract

It is well known that the Pearl River Estuary is a complex network-rivers estuary which consists of more than 200 waterways. The fresh water comes from three rivers, i.e. the West River, the North River and the East River, and discharges into the South China Sea through eight mouths. Both the fresh water and the tide from the sea are mixed in the estuary. Under such a flow the sediment transport is extremely complicated. Although the sediment concentration is not so high, the total sediment amount transported to this estuary is huge due to the tremendous runoff from the three big rivers. The sedimentation in the network-rivers and those river mouths causes various problems, such as navigational problems, flood problems, river evolution problems, drinking water problems, and etc. This paper will briefly report those sediment problems in the Pearl River Estuary and the research work carried out in recent years. The methods used to study the sediment problems include the numerical modeling, physical scale model experiments and remote sense and field data analysis.

Keywords: The Pearl River Estuary, sediment problems, remote sense, numerical modeling, physical scale model experiment.