Chengyu Liu¹, Wei Gu¹, Jinlong Chao¹, Lantao Li¹, Shuai Yuan², Yingjun Xu¹

¹ State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;

² National Marine Environment Monitoring Center, Dalian, China.

 

Abstract: To investigate the spatio-temporal characteristics of sea-ice resource, we used sea-ice volume to measure the amount of sea-ice resource in the Bohai Sea, China. The sea-ice area was extracted from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) remote-sensing images using the zonal threshold method. The sea-ice thickness was estimated using a sea-ice model based on shortwave radiation theory and field measurements. The spatio-temporal characteristics of sea-ice volume were then analysed using GIS technology. The results indicate that the Bohai Sea experienced two sea-ice volume peaks in winter 2009/10. The largest sea-ice volume was in Liaodong Bay (~80.26% of the entire sea-ice volume of the Bohai Sea). Bohai Bay had the second largest ice volume, and Laizhou Bay the smallest. The relationship between sea-ice volume and distance from shore is essentially exponential. The proportion of total sea-ice volume that is 0–10km from shore is ~42.43%, whereas the proportion that is 100–110km from shore is only 0.002%.