A Comprehensive Lagrangian Transport Study in A Long-Narrow Bay, Xiangshan Bay, China

Study on the transport and mixing in coastal waters is of great concern to the ocean resources exploitation and ecological system protection. Lagrangian methods are direct and effective of researching mass transport. Two Lagrangian tools were adopted and combined to describe water transport in a long-narrow bay, Xiangshan Bay, China. Based on the fields of tidal velocity simulated from the 3-D hydrodynamic model, Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) and synoptic Lagrangian maps (SLMs) were calculated in the study area. Through comparison of the results, the features and relation of the two tools were discussed. The results show that the LCSs act as the separatrix of the water regions with different transport characteristics and can identify the water areas with different transport time scales. The comprehensive application of the Lagrangian tools is helpful to obtain more insight into the water transport process.