Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

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The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow andEast China Sea: Past trends, progress, and possible futures
Xiao Hua Wang a, *, Yang-Ki Cho b, Xinyu Guo c, Chau-Ron Wu d, Junliang Zhou ea

The Sino-Australian Research Centre for Coastal Management, the University of New South Wales, Canberra, ACT 2610, Australia
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences/Research Institute of Oceanography, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea
c
Center for Marine Environmental Studies, Ehime University, Japand
National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, TaiwaneState Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, Chinab

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Accepted 21 May 2015
Available online xxx

Coastal environments are a key location for transport, commercial, residential and defence infrastructure,and have provided conditions suitable for economic growth. They also fulﬁl important cultural, recreational and aesthetic needs; have intrinsic ecosystem service values; and provide essential biogeochemical functions such as primary productivity, nutrient cycling and water ﬁltration. The rapid
expansion in economic development and anticipated growth of the population in the coastal zones along
the Yellow and East China Sea basin has placed this region under intense multiple stresses. Here we aim
to: 1) synthesize the new knowledge/science in coastal oceanography since 2010 within the context ofthe scientiﬁc literature published in English; 2) report on a citation analysis that assesses whether new
research topics have emerged and integrated over time, indicate the location of modelling and ﬁeldbased studies; and 3) suggest where the new research should develop for heavily impacted estuaries
and coastal seas of East Asia. The conclusions of the synthesis include: 1) China has emerged as adominant force in the region in producing scientiﬁc literature in coastal oceanography, although the areaof publications has shifted from its traditional ﬁelds such as physical oceanography; 2) there has been an
increasing number of publications with cross-disciplinary themes between physical oceanography andother ﬁelds of the biological, chemical, and geological disciplines, but vigorous and systematic funding
mechanisms are still lacking to ensure the viability of large scale multi-disciplinary teams and projects inorder to support trans-disciplinary research and newly emerging ﬁelds; 3) coastal oceanography is
responding to new challenges, with many papers studying the impacts of human activities on marine
environment and ecology, but so far very few studying management and conservation strategies oroffering policy solutions.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
coastal oceanography
physical and biogeochemical processes
conservation
management
Yellow Sea and East China Sea
China
Korea
Japan
Taiwan1. Introduction
The environmental degradation of the waters of heavily populated coasts such as the Yellow and East China Sea (Fig. 1) isparticularly serious because of the multiple environmental pressures facing these regions from rapid growth, coastal erosion, land
reclamation, dredging, increased navigation, oil and gas infrastructure development, and sediment/nutrient run-off due toincreased human activity in these catchment areas (Dong et al.,2010; Liu et al., 2010; Ding et al., 2011; Hu et al., 2011; Song et al.,* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hua.wang@adfa.edu.au (X.H. Wang).

2013; Song and Wang, 2013; Zhou et al., 2014; Gao et al., 2014a,
2014b; Chen et al., 2014). Ineffectual coastal management
including the lack of linkages between science and policy often
escalate these environmental problems (Mee, 2012). Marine environmental conservation and integrated coastal zone management(ICZM) require research that integrates science with economic andsocial changes beyond the scope of current management regimes toassist in delivering more sustainable development outcomes(Wang et al., 2011b).
This synthesis follows the Special Issue (SI) with its theme:“Impact on coasts and their ecosystems in the Yellow and East
China Sea by intensive anthropogenic activities”. The contributors to this SI are from countries/region of the Yellow and East
China Sea including mainland China (China hereafter), Korea,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039
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2. A historical perspective
2.1. China

Fig. 1. Map of the Yellow and East China Sea with the long term hydrographic
observation stations and PN line taken by National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, Korea, and the Japan Meteorological Agency, respectively. The observations are available from the Korea Oceanographic Data Center (KODC) and the Japan
Oceanographic Data Center (JODC), respectively.

Japan and Taiwan. The SI aims to examine and document thephysical and ecological impacts and the biogeochemical evolution and mechanisms of the coasts in the Yellow and East China
Sea region due to intensive human activities and their resultant
effects on the coastal ecosystem structures and functions. The SI
assesses the inﬂuences of human activities on the environmental
degradation and sustainable use of the marine resources in theseenvironments; probes into the possible scientiﬁc approaches tomanage and recover coastal ecological functions; reports
whether the discipline has responded to on-going and new issues (such as climate change and eutrophication) and consequently has developed new directions of research. To this end,
the paper aims to: 1) synthesize the new knowledge/sciencesince 2010 within the context of the scientiﬁc literature published in English; 2) report on a citation analysis that assesses
whether new research topics have emerged and integrated overtime, indicate the location of modelling and field-based studies;and 3) make suggestions where the new research should
develop for heavily impacted estuaries and coastal seas of EastAsia.
The papers reviewed were indexed by the Oceanic Abstracts,
which focuses on worldwide literature pertaining to the marine
and brackish-water environment. We culled papers that were notin English even though they had English titles and abstracts listed
within the database. We acknowledge the limitation of using one
single database which may have led to a non-exhaustive search ofentire literature available. However, a total of 670 papers frommainstream English journals reviewed here do represent asnapshot of the current status of coastal oceanography research
for the heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea region from2010 to date.

Studies of the Yellow and East China Sea during the 1980s and1990s appear to be dominated by physical oceanography with aparticular focus on hydrography and circulation dynamics using insitu observations, and simple numerical models addressing speciﬁcmechanisms (e.g. Su, 1998). In this last decade, the Chinese scientiﬁc community has enjoyed a rapid rise in research and development funding. A conservative estimate suggests an investment in
the order of CNY300 million (US$50 million, Chen, D.K., personalcommunication) per year in oceanography/marine science researchthrough major funding schemes such as ‘973’ (Ministry of Scienceand Technology) and NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation ofChina). NSFC project management reports (e.g. Ren et al., 2014)
suggest that NSFC alone has provided an annual funding of CNY138
million (US$23 million) for marine and polar sciences averaged
over a period from 2007 to 2014. This funding growth has beenfurther coupled by an aggressive expansion of oceanography departments and schools among its universities and thus numbers ofgraduate students. As a result, among its regional neighbours inEast Asia, China has published a total of 386 journal articles concerning the Yellow and East China Sea region, the largest number
indexed by Oceanic Abstracts since 2010 (Table 1). Furthermore, it
has boasted an averaged 8% per annum growth in the number ofpublications on the Yellow and East China Sea region between 2010
and 2014 (Fig. 2), again the fastest growth rate in the region.
Within this period, there are a limited number of review papers
including ‘Integrated management of nutrients from the watershed
to coast in the subtropical region’ by Chen and Hong (2012);‘Pollution status of the Bohai Sea: An overview of the environmental quality assessment related trace metals’ by Gao et al.
(2014b); and ‘Marine renewable energy in China: Current status
and perspectives’ by Zhang et al. (2014b). A special issue on ‘Dynamics of Chinese muddy coasts and estuaries’ (Wang et al., 2011a)
includes a collection of ten papers as case studies of the Changjiang(Yangtze River), Huanghe (Yellow River) and Zhujiang (Pearl River)
estuaries, and the Chinese muddy coasts in the Bohai, Yellow, East
China and South China Seas. These papers represent the recent
advancement in Chinese estuarine and coastal research during the
2000s. A more geographically focused review can be found by Honget al. (2011) who synthesized the physical, biogeochemical processes and ecosystem dynamics in the Taiwan Strait, and these~ o-Southern Oscillation
processes' interconnectivity with El Nin(ENSO) and interannual variability.
In biogeochemistry, extensive research has been conducted on
nutrient dynamics (Guo et al., 2012; Hung et al., 2013; Chen et al.,2015), eutrophication and associated algal and jellyﬁsh blooms(Dong et al., 2010; Cui et al., 2012; Huo et al., 2013; Dai et al., 2014),
and molecular biology of bloom formation. Coastal pollution is ahistorical research area with a focus on heavy metals (Jiang et al.,2014), which has been enriched by the more recent efforts inorganic pollution research, including pesticides, hydrocarbons(Deng et al., 2013; Hu et al., 2014), chlorinated compounds (Huet al., 2011; Duan et al., 2013), polybrominated diphenyl ethers(Fan et al., 2014), and the emerging pharmaceuticals and personalcare products (Yan et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2013).
Table 1
The number of publications by countries/region between 2010
and 2015 focussing on the Yellow and East China Sea region.
China

Korea

Japan

Taiwan

393

119

39

117

Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
trends, progress, and possible futures, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039

X.H. Wang et al. / Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

Fig. 2. Number of publications by the countries/region between 2010 and 2014indexed in Oceanic Abstracts focussing on the Yellow and East China Sea region.

3

study ﬁelds for oceanographers in Japan. Based on ﬁeld observations and numerical models, Japanese scientists have publishednumerous papers on the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea in lastcentury with most of them included in two review papers(Ichikawa and Beardsley, 2002; Isobe, 2008).
hoku forced
The 2011 earthquake off the Paciﬁc coast of To
most funding and oceanographers in Japan to shift to the issues
related to this disaster. Although there are still some projects on
the East China Sea based on personal interests and funding fromthe Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), there is nonational project designed for the East China Sea. Consequently,
there has been a reduction in the number of papers published by
Japanese scientists from the studies on the East China Sea. As anapparent example, there were only 39 papers since 2010 fromJapan in the Oceanic Abstracts database searches concerning issuesof the Yellow and East China Sea. That was the smallest number
amongst the papers for the region from China, Korea, Japan andTaiwan (Table 1).

2.2. Korea
Reclamation, coastal erosion, red tides and pollution have beenchallenging issues for the coastal area of Korea. The Ministry of
Oceans and Fisheries, Korea was established in 1996 to meet thenation's increasing demand on ocean environments, constructionof ports, maritime shipping, and ﬁsheries.
About 2400 km2 was reclaimed for agricultural and urban areasin Korea from 1970 to 2008 (Koh and de Jonge, 2014). Sea dykes
have been constructed to prevent intrusion of seawater into mostestuaries of the Korean peninsula. Sea dykes have resulted in weaktidal currents, strong stratiﬁcation and sea level changes in theestuaries (Byun et al., 2004; Cho et al., 2004).
Geologists have shown an interest in studying sediment transport along the coast of the Yellow Sea. The movements of sedimentsin the Yellow Sea are caused by the winds and waves in the wintermonsoon (Lee, 2014).
A total of 1330 red tide events occurred along the Korean coasts
from 1972 to 2011. The annual red tide events dramaticallyincreased from 1 to 9 in 1970s to 15e35 in 1980s. The annual redtide events increased to 25e109 in 1990s but decreased to 12e83 in
2000s (Lee et al., 2013). It is noticeable that the red tides havemostly occurred offshore in the south of Korea rather than in theestuaries or bays. The Changjiang diluted water might play somerole in occurrence of the red tides in the south sea of Korea (Lee,2008). The recent rapid increase of dissolved inorganic nitrogenin the coast of Korea has been attributed to increasing dissolved
inorganic nitrogen in the Changjiang River (Kim et al., 2013b).
The MV Hebei Spirit accident in December 2007 resulted in thelargest oil spill ever recorded in the Yellow Sea (Kim et al., 2013a).
About 10,500 metric tons of crude oil was spilt into the sea. As aresult, more than 70 km of coastline was polluted. After the accident, oil spills were a matter of urgent concern for research in Korea.
2.3. Japan
Studies on the East China Sea and Yellow Sea in Japan have along history. Regular monitoring (4 times in a year) of physical,
chemical, and biological variables have been conducted by theJapan Meteorological Agency for more than 50 years along a section(PN line, Fig. 1) from the Kuroshio to the offshore area of Changjiang
estuary (Hinata, 1996; Guo et al., 2012; Lui et al., 2014). In addition,other regular observations have been led by the Fisheries Research
Agency and other agencies in Japan for more than 50 years along asection at 31.5 N (Siswanto et al., 2008).
Because of their important role in ﬁsheries and marine environments, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea are two important

2.4. Taiwan
Taiwan is blessed to be surrounded by the rich natural resourcesof the ocean. Continuous investigations and studies of the East
China Sea have been conducted in the past decades. However, mostinvestigations have been individual endeavours, and lacked linkages amongst studies. During 1989e2000, an integrated project,
the Kuroshio Edge Exchange Processes (KEEP), made signiﬁcantadvances in biogeochemical and hydrodynamic processes in the
East China Sea (Liu et al., 2003). Researchers have focused on in-situ
observations rather than numerical modelling.
Following KEEP, the Long-term Observation and Research of theEast China Sea (LORECS), another inter-disciplinary project which
was initiated in 2000 and completed in 2012, surveyed routinely
the East China Sea shelf between Changjiang Estuary and Taiwan.
The achievements from this project have been fruitful and have
improved the knowledge of the ocean dynamics and biogeochemistry in the East China Sea. Modelling efforts were also
involved in the project. The numerical models developed from the
project have been used not only for process studies to uncover
dynamics and mechanisms, but also (in conjunction with ﬁeld data)to help analyze and explain observations for ocean predictions.
3. Main disciplines
3.1. China
The papers searched from the Oceanic Abstracts database weredivided into traditional disciplines of physical oceanography, marine geology, biology and chemistry (Table 2). Physical oceanography had the least number of papers (23); whereas marine
chemistry had the largest number (120). Marine ecology as an
emerging and environmental focused discipline had a total of 88
papers. There were 36 papers on cross-disciplinary studies containing at least one biological, chemical or geological subdisciplinary ﬁeld.
Table 2The number of publications by discipline between 2010 and 2015
focussing on the Yellow and East China Sea region.

Physical oceanography
Marine geology
Marine chemistry
Marine biology
Marine ecology

China

Korea

Japan

Taiwan

23
46
120
44
88

54
5
32
36
48

16
0
9
8
0

52
8
42
33
18

Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
trends, progress, and possible futures, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039

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X.H. Wang et al. / Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

For biogeochemical papers, trace elements, heavy metals, nutrients and sediments are still being widely published among themarine chemistry and environmental researchers. Increasing
numbers of such environmental papers deal with coastal pollution
from organic pollutants such as pesticides, polycyclic aromatichydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochloride pesticides, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), andpharmaceuticals. This is a strong reﬂection of the increasing levelsof human impacts on coastal seas, the rapid development andavailability of highly sensitive analytical facilities in the Asia Paciﬁccountries, and the rapid rise in research funding in the region.
From above, it can be observed that marine chemistry has
become a dominant discipline in coastal oceanography. Marine
ecology has emerged strongly covering the study areas including
ecosystem dynamics (50), phytoplankton/red tides/green tides(39). Cross-disciplinary study involving biogeochemistry has also
become a feature in physical process papers. Interestingly, physicaloceanography was a strong traditional area in the studies of China
Seas (Su, 1998), but it has now become the smallest discipline withmost of the papers focussing on circulation and currents (17), lessthan its counterparts from Korea (54) and Taiwan (52).
3.2. Korea
The papers published by Korean scientists were grouped into
the disciplines of physical oceanography, marine geology, marine
biology, and marine chemistry. The discipline of physical oceanography had the largest number of published papers (54), whereas
the marine geology discipline had the least numbers published(23). Marine ecology and the marine chemistry discipline had atotal of 48 and 32 papers, respectively.
The major research areas of physical oceanography were circulation (21), climate change (17) and river plume (9) based on the
published papers. Algae bloom was a dominant study area in marine biology on the basis of 13 published papers.
Marine biology has wide range of study areas including primary
production, taxonomy, biomass, feeding mechanism, and jelly ﬁsh.
Most papers were on pollution (23) in marine chemistry, andsedimentation (16) in marine geology, respectively.
3.3. Japan
Among the 39 papers from Japan, physical oceanography had
the largest number (16), while marine chemistry and marine
biology had almost the same number (9 and 8, respectively).
Collaboration between physical oceanography and marine chemistry as well as that between physical oceanography and marine
biology contributed to two and three papers, respectively.
The topics given by papers from physical oceanography were
circulation (8), ocean mixing (4), air-sea interaction (4). The papers
for air-sea interaction in the East China Sea were a part of a national
project focussing on the coupled ocean atmosphere variability overMonsoonal Asia (http://www.atmos.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/hotspot/index_eng.html).
3.4. Taiwan
There were 117 papers published by scientists from Taiwan.
Similar to Korean and Japanese scientists, physical oceanography
had the largest number (52), while marine geology the least
number (8). There were also 28 papers on cross-disciplinary studies
between physical oceanography and other ﬁelds of the biological,
chemical or geological disciplines.
Circulation was the dominant sub-discipline for physicaloceanography. In addition, the other sub-disciplines of physicaloceanography included tides (9), river plume (8), and waves (4).
The sub-disciplines of ecology included phytoplankton (15),ecosystem (12), and dynamics (4).
4. Locations of research
4.1. China
The research location was grouped by their geographicalorientation. Most of papers were on the Yellow Sea (255), followedby the East China Sea (229), and Bohai Sea (47). In the presence ofseveral large rivers (such as rivers of Changjiang, Huanghe andZhujiang) that deliver a large amount of freshwater, nutrients andsediments to the Yellow and East China Sea, China has one of themost turbid and eutrophic marine environment in its coastal seasand estuaries. Despite this, there were only 82 papers researching‘estuaries’ and ‘bays’. This number is only one third of the publications that studied the Yellow Sea.
4.2. Korea
The most researched location was the Yellow Sea (86) and theEast China Sea (51). The East China Sea includes the south sea of
Korea. Some papers included both the Yellow Sea and the East
China Sea simultaneously. The circulation of the Yellow Sea is the
traditional study area. Tidal ﬂats and their reclamation has been an
emerging issue for the Yellow Sea.
4.3. JapanDue to the geographical limitation, most research in Japan isnaturally on the East China Sea. Collaboration with scientists fromother countries contributed two papers on the Yellow Sea and one
paper on estuaries.
4.4. Taiwan
The most dominant research area for Taiwan scientists is theEast China Sea. Dependent on the distance from Taiwan, most of theresearch focused on the East China Sea (101), followed by the Yellow Sea (22), and then the Bohai Sea (5). In addition, there were 25
papers researching estuaries or bays.
5. Research collaboration
5.1. China
The ChinaeItaly collaboration was established to develop andimprove the basic research in the ﬁeld. Italian and Chinese researchers have shared common interests on many issues such as
studying the conditions and characteristics of the China, Adriaticand Ionian seas.
The ChinaeAustralia collaboration was established via the SinoAustralian Research Centre for Coastal Management (SARCCM).
SARCCM is a Research Centre of the University of New South Wales(UNSW) Australia with a multidisciplinary/multi-faculty focus. It
has worked closely with the Ocean University of China in researchon coastal science and management. SARCCM was launched at
UNSW in 2010.
In 2009, China and Russia established a partnership to build aninternational marine ecological safety monitoring demonstration
station in Qingdao, China. This station was designed as a base formonitoring the marine ecological environment and carrying out
research in the Yellow Sea.

Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
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X.H. Wang et al. / Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

5.2. Korea
There is little cooperation of Korea in this study area except with
China. The ChinaeKorea Joint Ocean Research Centre funded by thegovernments of China and Korea was established in 1995 toenhance exchange and cooperation on ocean science and environment in Qingdao, China.
Six hydrographic cruises were taken by the cooperation between the First Institute of Oceanography, China, and the Korea
Ocean Research and Development Institute, Korea, covering thewhole Yellow Sea from 1996 to 1998. These observations enabled abetter understanding of the hydrography and its seasonalevolution.
Two regional workshops on Asian Marginal Seas including the
Yellow and the East China Sea have been held every two years.
PAMS (PaciﬁcAsian Marginal Seas) began in 1981 as a regional
meeting on the North Paciﬁc Ocean and its other marginal seas. The
PEACE (Program of the East Asian Cooperative Experiments)
workshop has provided opportunities for international cooperative
research on regional oceanography in the East Asian Sea.
Despite strong Korea-China collaboration in 1990s, there are
currently no collaborative projects on-going between these twonations.
5.3. Japan
There were two important joint projects between Japan and
China on the Kuroshio and the East China Sea in the last century.
One is the JapaneChina Joint Research Programme on the Kuroshio(JRK) from 1977 to 1998 while the other is Material Cycling in the
East China Sea-MASFLEX Program from 1992 to 1997. The understanding from the former project on the physical aspect of theKuroshio and its inﬂuences on the East China Sea has been summarized by Su et al. (1990) and Guan and Fang (2006). The latter
focuses on the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and othersubstances in the East China Sea and its connection to globalchange. A special issue from this project has been published by
Japanese scientists (Tsunogai et al., 2003).
The bilateral cooperation between Japan and China in recent
years has been shifted from fundamental research to environmental and ﬁsheries issues in the East China Sea. One example isthe migration of the Nemopilema nomurai from the East China Sea
to Japan Sea (Uye, personal communication).
5.4. Taiwan
Taiwan-sponsored participation in the World Ocean Circulation
Experiment (WOCE) deployed the moored current meter array eastof Taiwan (PCM-1) for the period of September 1994 to May 1996.
This moored data has been used to derive estimates of the Kuroshiotransport at the entrance to the East China Sea.
Recently, a series of Taiwan-USA joint projects, such as the
Quantifying, Predicting, and Exploiting Uncertainty (QPE) Project,
were established to explore the variability, dynamics, and acousticsof the Kuroshio, East China Sea, and South China Sea.
6. Development of research methodology
6.1. China
Three areas of research methodology have been examined. Insitu observation appears to dominate the methodology with a total of 161 papers. There were 88 papers using Satellite/remotesensing. Satellite imageries from space-borne sensors such as
MODIS, SeaWIFS, AVHRR, SAR and QuickScat were the most

5commonly used to study topics such as suspended particular matters, harmful algae blooms, water mass characteristics, and ocean
circulation (e.g. Cui et al., 2012). Papers using modelling approaches
remain popular and there were 27 papers involved in numericalstudies using community ocean models such as MOM (Modular
Ocean Model) and ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System).
6.2. Korea
Observations were the dominant methodology. There were 72
papers published on observational data. Modelling (26) and satellite/remote sensing (23) papers are increasing with time. Hydrographic observation has been bimonthly conducted by National
Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI), Korea since1960. The region of this observation is shown in Fig. 1. A nationwide
red tide monitoring network was started in 1995. This data isvaluable to the understanding of long-term changes in the Yellow
and East China Sea. Quantitative measurements of sedimenttransport were attempted in Korea with the introduction of a selfcontained benthic tripod (Lee, 2014). Hydrodynamic parameters
including water depth, current velocities, waves, suspended sediment concentrations and bed-level ﬂuctuations were recorded in atime-series. Heat ﬂux across the surface of the macro tidal ﬂat wasestimated based on in-situ observations on a tidal ﬂat (Kim andCho, 2009).
The number of papers using satellite data has greatly increased
due to its free accessibility. Remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) by satellites was compared with in-situ SST in the seasaround the Korean Peninsula from 1981 to 2013 (e.g. Park et al.,2015). Comparison with in-situ SST shows that the satellite SST in
the Yellow Sea has a warm bias in early 1980s and a cold bias inearly 2010s (Kwak et al., 2015). The GOCI (Geostationary Ocean
Color Imager) was launched to observe ocean-color around the
Korean Peninsula in June 2010. The spatial resolution of the GOCI isabout 500 m and the range of the target area is about
2500 km  2500 km centered on Korean Peninsula. It takes eight
images per day. The high frequency resolution images of the GOCI
have enabled scientists to resolve intra-diurnal variation of suspended sediment, chlorophyll a, and algae patches.
Although the total number of papers published on modelling
was less than those on observation, the number of papers in thisarea has been increasing recently. For example, ROMS is usedwidely to study circulation in marginal seas. The FVCOM (FiniteVolume Coastal Ocean Model) and EFDC (Environmental Fluid
Dynamics Code) have been adapted for coastal area and estuarine
systems, respectively.
6.3. Japan
Being the same as for Korea, ﬁeld observation is the major
method for Japanese scientists to work with the East China Sea.
Among the 39 papers from Japan, 27 papers were based on ﬁeld
observations. Research vessels and their usage system is one of thefundamental conditions for such studies in Japan.
There were 9 papers from numerical modelling and 3 papers
from satellite/remote sensing. Eight papers based on numericalmodelling still use the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) althoughother models (ROMS and FVCOM) have been widely used for
marginal seas over the world. The satellite/remote sensing papers
are based on ocean-color data.
6.4. Taiwan
Field survey is also the main methodology for the papers published by Taiwan scientists. There were 82 papers in total using in-

Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
trends, progress, and possible futures, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039

6

X.H. Wang et al. / Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

situ measurements to conduct their studies on the East China Sea.
In-situ observation of the ocean is limited to narrow areas and it isvirtually impossible to fully comprehend the ocean process anddynamics. Thus, contribution to these studies from numericalmodeling and remote sensing efforts is increasing. Taiwan scientists have developed numerous models with different integration
domains and resolutions to study the East China Sea and thewestern North Paciﬁc Ocean (e.g. Wu et al., 2008). There were 50
papers published using numerical modelling as their major methodology. In addition, 26 papers from Taiwan were based on satellite
remote sensing data.

7.4. Taiwan
Only a few of the research papers for Taiwan placed emphasis on
issues concerning management (2), conservation (1), and policy (1).
Although the East China Sea has often caught the policy maker's
attention, their marine development still lacks an understanding of
the ocean processes. Studying the oceanic features can provide thebasis for an improved understanding of the ocean's interplay withthe climate, the earth and its species. With a better knowledge ofthe ocean dynamics in the region, numerous effects caused byweather and disasters, as well as economic, ﬁshery, and environmental problems can be ameliorated.

7. Trends in management and conservation

8. Towards the future

7.1. China

The coastal environments are zones of major economic growth
and are the location for most of the transport, commercial, residential and defence infrastructure. They also fulﬁl important cultural, recreational and aesthetic needs, have intrinsic ecosystemservice values and provide essential biochemical functions such as
primary productivity, nutrient cycling and water ﬁltration. The
anticipated growth of the population in the coastal zones along the
Yellow and East China Sea basin will make a coastal observing andforecasting systems an even higher priority than they are today forenvironmental protection and coastal hazard management.
Development and support of long-term coastal research sites, bothin heavily impacted eutrophic coastal environments (e.g. Changjiang estuary) and the oligotrophic offshore region (e.g. The PNline) will lead to an identiﬁcation of quantitative relationships between physical and biological processes and their response toanthropogenic stressors and these processes can be represented
within predictive models. Observation and prediction on sea fog inthe coastal area of the Yellow Sea is one of challenging issues for the
future (Cho et al., 2000).
Future climate change projections must be dynamically downscaled to the coastal zones of the Yellow and the East China Seasfrom global climate models (Seo et al., 2014). Forecasting capability
that informs event detection, provision of information can assist
disasters (e.g. oil spills, storm surges and harmful algae bloom
events), to prepare readiness and response to extreme events, or to
explore scenarios particularly those relating to the evaluation ofrisk management. Capability development to provide access tobetter information, including near real-time data processing andforecasting, can facilitate anticipatory and responsive decisionmaking, guidelines, and community networks.
Many existing community ocean models have integrated physical and biogeochemical models to investigate coastal ecosystem
dynamics. However, there is a need to improve the performance of
these models for the extremely turbid coastal oceans such as the
Yellow and East China Sea, where the light climate in the watercolumn in general and the time-depth-dependent PAR (photosynthetically available radiation) proﬁle in particular is tightly
controlled by the mechanisms of sediment dynamics. Therefore,
these sediment processes affecting the water column light physics
will need to be represented more accurately in these models.
Commonly-used empirical equations for calculating downward
PAR irradiance (including single and double exponential forms) willneed to be modiﬁed in order to identify a more theoretically-soundparameterization for application to physical and biogeochemical
models for this region. There is also a need to improve thebiogeochemical models to address the issue of ﬁnding an adequate
conversion term to compute the attenuation coefﬁcients fromcarbon biomass.
Routine measurements from space-borne sensors have beencombined and used together with model-based operational ocean

To investigate whether coastal research had incorporated integrated coastal zone management, all papers in the database were
evaluated in terms of their contribution to coastal management.
There were 6% (22) and 2% (7) of papers that emphasized ‘management’ and ‘conservation’, respectively, in their titles or abstracts.
Within these papers, two used the concept ‘integrated coastal zone
management’, one reviewed nutrient variation and the associatedaquatic ecosystem responses in the subtropical region (Chen andHong, 2012). They attributed imbalanced and modiﬁed ratio andﬂux of nutrients delivered to aquatic ecosystems to three major
causes: 1) human activities in the catchment areas; 2) climate
perturbations; and 3) changes in land use and damming. To addressthese issues, authors proposed institutional arrangements to be
developed and coordinated across multiple government agencies
and other stakeholders from the watershed to the coast. They
argued that the framework should integrate inter-disciplinary scientiﬁc approaches with adaptive principles regarding nutrient
management.
7.2. Korea
Very limited papers were directly related to management (2)and conservation (2). However, many papers had addressed theenvironmental changes after coastal development such as reclamations and sea dykes. Large reclamation projects in the Yellow
Sea have been undertaken in Korea during a rapid economic
development period. It seemed to be an economic way to provide
land for building cities and factories. The management and theconservation of the tidal ﬂats have been debated for a decadefollowing many reclamation projects in Korea. Strong opposition
has led to a decline in such large reclamation projects (Koh and deJonge, 2014).
7.3. Japan
There was no paper from Japan paying attention to management
and conservation in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea. This is partly
because the area of the East China Sea freely observed by Japanesescientists is mainly affected by the Kuroshio and is far from thecoast where human activities are important to the marine environment. However, there were many papers from Japan considering the management and conservation of inland seas and bays. In
addition to traditional approach for the management and conservation, a new concept called ‘Sato-Umi’, which is deﬁned as “highproductivity and biodiversity in the coastal sea area with humaninteraction”, has been proposed and gradually accepted by thecommunity (Yanagi, 2008, p. 351).

Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
trends, progress, and possible futures, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039

X.H. Wang et al. / Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science xxx (2015) 1e9

forecasting systems. Space- and air-borne observation with highresolution capability will be useful to capture small scale variability
in coastal areas. There is a research need to bridge the gap of thecurrent capacity for utilizing satellite/remote sensing measurements in such systems designed for the estuaries and coastal environments. Complex coastal topography and rougher sea stateshinder the applications of recent region based satellites (e.g. HJ1A,
B and C; Haiyang 1 and 2; GOCI). Remote sensing algorithms need
to be developed and improved to retrieve ocean data such as suspended sediment concentration, chlorophyll as well as coastal
altimetry. An example of the latter involves estimation of sea levelanomalies within 5 km from the coastline using optimal waveform
retracking through a fuzzy multiple retracking system (e.g. Idris
et al., 2014).
Coastal infrastructure developments such as dredged navigation
channels and land reclamation may result in changes in storm
surges, tides and mean sea level, which in turn affect coastal
erosion, sedimentation and ﬂooding patterns (Aucan and Ridd,
2000; Winterwerp, 2011; Song et al., 2013; Pelling et al., 2013; Liet al., 2014b; Feng et al., 2015). Systems of modeling, in-situ
observation and remote sensing provide us with the capability toanswer the questions concerning the likely impacts and effects ofinfrastructure construction on the coastal environments. For
example, coastal ﬂooding may be assessed through reﬁnements of
the likelihood of information to establish the return period of storm
surges of different intensities under changed tides and mean sea
level. The extent of ﬂooding and associated economic losses should
be calculated for different thresholds of storm surges. Hence,probabilistic and dollar value information may be provided for
decision-makers with treatment options to manage the risks ofcoastal ﬂooding in terms of the “statistically expected” costs and/or
fatalities.
Experience in participatory and multidisciplinary research incoastal management situations show that ICZM needs to incorporate various actors (e.g. coastal communities, coastal scientists andengineers, marine policy and law experts, government agencies
and industries) in order to inform decisions and ensure thecompatibility of development and conservation (Ofﬁcial Journal of
the European Union, 2009). Use of modelling and stakeholder
participation can improve the adaptive capacity of the ICZM. New
methodological approaches such as the Sato-Umi model (Yanagi,
2007, 2008) need to be developed and/or adopted to identify,
map, explore and enable the local actors to help manage conﬂict
and sustainability issues in the region. The integrated observing
and forecasting system should be used as a quantitative tool insocial learning to inform and discuss with stakeholders the socialand policy options (as recommended by the National Framework forMarine Research and Innovation, OPSAG, 2009).
We also call for renewed efforts to conduct government sponsored bi- and/or multi-lateral collaborative research into the issuesof the Yellow and East China Sea among the oceanography communities in China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The historical and ongoing international collaborations such as JapaneChina JRK and
PAMS has produced high impact research outcomes (e.g. Su et al.,1990) as well as active research communities (e.g. PAMS). The
environmental and ﬁsheries issues in the Yellow and East China Sea
facing our communities have no boundaries. Thus to address themeffectively, close cooperation with combined efforts from thesenations/region is urgently required.
9. Contributions made by this special issue
This Yellow and East China Sea Special Issue is a collection of 15
papers from the authors of China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The SI
addresses many of the gaps and opportunities outlined above.

7

Unlike traditional research during 1990s, most of papers haveevaluated physical, environmental and ecological impact of land
use and reclamation (Suh et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2014; Wang et al.,2014; Gao et al., 2014a; Chen et al., 2014; Sin et al., 2015), channel
dredging, bridging (Hayami et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2015) anddamming (Kwak et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014a) on its coastal seasand estuarine environment. Others have emphasized biogeochemical processes including: a review of PAR parameterization incurrent ecosystem dynamics models (Byun et al., 2014), and ﬁeldbased studies of phytoplankton growth, hypoxia, eutrophicationand metal toxicity (Kim and Kim, 2014; Li et al., 2014a; Lui et al.,2014; Baek et al., 2015).
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Julie Kesby forcollecting and grouping papers as well as editorial assistance andadvice in the production of this paper. Special thanks to Dr Wen Wu
for obtaining NSFC marine and polar science funding data. This is
publication no. 26 of the Sino-Australian Research Centre for
Coastal Management. X.H. Wang was supported by UNSW Special
Study Program.
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Please cite this article in press as: Wang, X.H., et al., The status of coastal oceanography in heavily impacted Yellow and East China Sea: Past
trends, progress, and possible futures, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.05.039