• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.102-113
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• 2019

Slack-tide sampling was carried out at 6 stations at high and low tide for a tidal cycle during spring tide of the early summer (June) and summer (July, August) of 2016 to determine the difference of water quality according to tide in Masan Bay, Korea. The mixing regime of all the water quality components investigated was well explained through the correlation with SAL. In the early summer and summer, TURB, DSi and NNN which mainly flow into the bay from the streams and SS, COD, AMN and $H_2S$ which mainly indicate the internal sink and source materials have a property of conservative mixing and non-conservative mixing, respectively. The conservative mixing showed a good linear relationship of the water quality between high and low tide, and the non-conservative mixing showed a variation of different pattern each other. Factor analysis performed on the concentration difference data sets between high and low tide helped in identifying the principal latent variables for them. In early summer, multiple effects (tidal action, natural influx and internal sinks and sources etc.) acted in combination for the differences to be distributed evenly in four factors (VF1~4), since there were few allochthonous inputs as a low-water season. On the contrary, in summer, the parameters showing large concentration difference at ST-1 affected by stream water were concentrated in one factor (VF1) and clearly distinguished from the parameters affected by the internal sinks and sources. In fact, there is no estuary (bay) that always maintains steady state flow conditions. The mixing regime of an estuary might be changed at any time due to the change of flushing time, and furthermore the change of end-member conditions due to the internal sinks and sources makes the occurrence of concentration difference inevitable. Therefore, when investigating the water quality of the estuary, it is necessary to take a sampling method considering the tide to obtain average water quality data.