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Sedimentation and lateral transport of 210Pb over the East China Sea Shelf

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Abstract

210Pb is an effective tracer of constraining particle transport and sedimentation in shelf regions. To reveal the spatial pattern of 210Pb over the East China Sea (i.e. ECS) Shelf, 210Pb in the surface sediments were examined at 11 stations, as well as 234Th and 210Pb in the water column at four stations. Overall, the plume zone of the Yangtze River along the coastline is a source area of 210Pb for the outer shelf, exporting 0.46 dpm cm−2 year−1 at least, which accounts for about 25 % of 210Pb input into this region. In the southern ECS Shelf to the north of the Taiwan Strait, the focusing factor (f) values are higher than unity, indicating a sink area of 210Pb. Boundary scavenging of 210Pb contributes 0.36 dpm cm−2 year−1 to this sink area on the basis of a mass balance model evaluation. Lateral transport of 210Pb to this region, quantified by 234Th and 210Pb in the water column, varied from 3.34 to 6.39 dpm cm−2 year−1 with an average of 4.83 dpm cm−2 year−1, also supporting its sink characteristic. To the southwest of the Cheju Island, the f values were less than unity, revealing a source region of 210Pb. The average export flux of 210Pb from this region was 1.64 dpm cm−2 year−1. Therefore, 210Pb sedimentation/settling showed significantly heterogeneous sedimentation of particulate matter over the ECS Shelf.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate Professor Tibor Braun and tow anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions, which greatly improved the presentation of this manuscript. This work is supported jointly by a Chinese COMRA program (No. DY125-13-E-01) and the Chinese National Science Foundation (41076043 and 41125020).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Ziming Fang, Weifeng Yang, Xinxing Zhang, Min Chen, Qiang Ma, Run Zhang, Minfang Zheng & Yusheng Qiu

  2. College of Marine Geosciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, China

    Dejiang Fan

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  1. Ziming Fang
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Correspondence to Weifeng Yang.

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Fang, Z., Yang, W., Zhang, X. et al. Sedimentation and lateral transport of 210Pb over the East China Sea Shelf. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 298, 739–748 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-013-2561-4

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