My name is Wenjie Deng, a second-year doctoral student in the Earth, Life and Environmental Science, Graduate school of Sciences and Engineering for Education. My research topic is hypoxia research in the East China Sea.
The East China Sea (ECS) is the largest continental shelf in the word, which receives a large amount of fluvial nutrients discharged from the coast, especially the Changjiang River. However, about the hypoxia of the ECS (hypoxia, DO < 2.0 mg L−1), only limited observations and investigations were conducted. It is significantly urgent to evaluate the evolution and impact of the hypoxia in the ECS. In addition, isotopes promote related research of hypoxic water from different sea areas as a tracer, and have been utilized to trace hypoxia sources in coastal seas. However, there is rare study on low-oxygen water by chemical tracers in the middle/outer shelf of the ECS, whose water can indirectly affect Japanese fisheries. In various chemical tracers, rare earth elements (REEs) are actually very useful tracers in tracing various origin of water masses. Hence, our research will focus on identifying and quantifying the water origins of oxygen-depleted bottom waters on the outer shelf with REEs chemical tracers for the first time.
In the future, we will continue to study low DO water on the outer shelf of ECS using other chemical tracers such as Nd, Ra, and estimate the material transport between pore water and low DO water. We will also consider the impact of environmental changes in the ECS on the Sea of Japan and the Western Pacific Ocean.