Satellite estimation of particulate organic carbon flux from Changjiang River to the estuary

Abstract Rivers link land and ocean ecosystems, the two largest active carbon reservoirs in the world, and transport tremendous amounts of particulate organic carbon (POC) into marginal seas annually. Due to high spatiotemporal variations, estimations of riverine POC flux into the sea can be relatively inexact when based on field measurement only. In this study, remote sensing algorithms of riverine POC flux through the Xuliujing hydrological station in the Changjiang River Estuary (CRE) were developed using satellite data with hourly resolution from the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI). Based on data collected during four seasonal cruises in the CRE from 2014 to 2016, POC concentration showed a significant linear relationship to total suspended matter (TSM) ( N  = 426, R 2  = 0.97, p in-situ data, the vertical POC concentration profile at Xuliujing showed an exponentially increasing curve ( p p