Mechanisms of Hypoxia Formation in the Ariake Sea, Japan, under Climate Change: Insights from Orthogonal Design.

Seasonal hypoxia events pose significant threats to the environment and ecosystems of coastal areas. Temperature, river discharge, and nutrient loading are key drivers, but their relative importance is affected by spatial variations in the coastal topography and ecological structure. This study used the Taguchi method to evaluate the impacts of these factors on dissolved oxygen (DO) dynamics in the Ariake Sea with a particular focus on the summer flood period. Each factor was set at three levels to represent potential climate change scenarios, offering a key advantage in efficiency by enabling reliable assessment with fewer simulations than the 27 trials required in a full factorial design (33). The results suggest that increased temperature and river discharge reduced DO throughout the year, while low nutrient loading enhanced DO in well-mixed nonsummer months. In summer, nutrient loading and river discharge were the primary drivers of hypoxia, contributing 51.5% and 41.2%, respectively (p < 0.05, at St. 3). A lagged autumnal response linked to summer floods showed that discharge explained 88.6% of DO decline (p < 0.05, at St. 1). Furthermore, experimental simulations indicated that doubling both discharge and nutrient loading expanded hypoxia to nearly two-thirds of the sea, threatening benthic fauna and ecosystem stability.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Environmental Science and Technology

• Publication date

  2025-11-10

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1021/acs.est.5c06412PMID 41213121
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Long-term developments in seasonal hypoxia and response to climate change: A three-decade modeling study in the Ariake Sea, Japan.

  2024cited by this paper
• What drove the nonlinear hypoxia response to nutrient loading in Chesapeake Bay during the 20th century?

  2022cited by this paper
• Next-generation regional ocean projections for living marine resource management in a changing climate

  2021cited by this paper
• Mechanisms of ecosystem crisis originated in frequent occurrence of red tides in Ariake Bay

  2021cited by this paper
• Quantifying the contributions of structural factors on runoff water quality from green roofs and optimizing assembled combinations using Taguchi method

  2020cited by this paper
• d4PDF: large-ensemble and high-resolution climate simulations for global warming risk assessment

  2020cited by this paper
• Hypoxic water mass in the highly turbid well-mixed macrotidal Rokkaku River Estuary, Ariake Sea, Japan

  2019cited by this paper
• Worsened physical condition due to climate change contributes to the increasing hypoxia in Chesapeake Bay.

  2018cited by this paper
• Decadal-scale variation in COD and DIN dynamics during the summer in the inner area of the Ariake Sea, Japan

  2018cited by this paper
• Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters

  2018cited by this paper
• Future increases in extreme precipitation exceed observed scaling rates

  2017cited by this paper
• Physical controls of hypoxia in waters adjacent to the Yangtze Estuary: A numerical modeling study.

  2015cited by this paper
• Long term variation in transparency in the inner area of Ariake Sea

  2015cited by this paper
• Implications of changes in the benthic environment and decline of macro-benthic communities in the inner part of Ariake Bay in relation to seasonal hypoxia

  2015cited by this paper
• Biogeochemical and environmental drivers of coastal hypoxia

  2015cited by this paper
• Marine Ecosystem Responses to Cenozoic Global Change

  2013cited by this paper
• Seasonal variations of water column nutrients in the inner area of Ariake Bay, Japan: the role of muddy sediments

  2013cited by this paper
• Quantifying the Impacts of Stratification and Nutrient Loading on Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

  2012cited by this paper
• Long-Term Trends in Chesapeake Bay Seasonal Hypoxia, Stratification, and Nutrient Loading

  2011cited by this paper
• Effects of hypoxia on benthic organisms in Tokyo Bay, Japan: a review.

  2011cited by this paper
• Temperature effects on oxygen thresholds for hypoxia in marine benthic organisms

  2011cited by this paper
• Numerical Experiments on Features of Nonlinear Tide and Its Influences on Sediment Transport in the Ariake Sea and the Yatsushiro Sea

  2010cited by this paper
• Dynamics and distribution of natural and human-caused hypoxia

  2010cited by this paper
• Gulf of Mexico hypoxia: exploring increasing sensitivity to nitrogen loads.

  2010cited by this paper
• Ocean deoxygenation in a warming world.

  2010cited by this paper
• Summary diagrams for coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem model skill assessment

  2009cited by this paper
• Temporal responses of coastal hypoxia to nutrient loading and physical controls

  2009cited by this paper
• GEM: a generic ecological model for estuaries and coastal waters

  2009cited by this paper
• Primary Production and Decomposition Dynamics of Particulate Organic Matter in the Inner Part of Ariake Bay

  2009cited by this paper
• Natural and human-induced hypoxia and consequences for coastal areas: synthesis and future development

  2009cited by this paper
• Thresholds of hypoxia for marine biodiversity

  2008cited by this paper
• Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems

  2008cited by this paper
• The Observation of Growth-decay Process of Hypoxic Water Mass in the head of Ariake Bay

  2007cited by this paper
• Critical events in the Ariake Bay ecosystem: Clam population collapse, red tides, and hypoxic bottom water

  2006cited by this paper
• The Role of Circulation in the Development of Hypoxia in Ise Bay, Japan

  2002cited by this paper
• Overview of hypoxia around the world.

  2001cited by this paper
• Design and Analysis of Experiments

  2001cited by this paper
• Tidal straining, density currents, and stirring in the control of estuarine stratification

  1990cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.