QUANTITY AND TRANSPORT OF SEDIMENT AT THE YANGTZE RIVER ESTUARY

<正> In the light of the regional geological and physiographic characteristics and their effects on minerals composition of sediment, the sources of the sediment at the Yangtze River Estuary can be divided into 3 supplying regions. The converging region is the Yangtze River Estuary. Based on the evaluations of heavy minerals and clay minerals on the supplying regions and converging region, using the least squares method, a normal equation is formulated, with which the converging percentage of each of the supplying regions is calculated. The research shows that most sediment was deposited in the Yangtze River Estuary, the remainder transported to southeast. With the known converging percentage of the Yangtze River supplying region and its amount of sediment, the total amount of sediment at the Yangtze River Estuary is computed to be 465.95 million tons per year, which agrees well with the value of 467.75 million tons per year calculated from the topographic maps of the Yangtze River Estuary drawn in 1915 and