Study on the effect of morphology change on salinity distribution in the Dinh an estuary, lower mekong river of Vietnam

Salinity intrusion into estuaries, in general, is mostly affected by river discharge and tidal level. Additionally, the change of salinity can also be attributed to other external forces such as wave height and river mouth morphology. However, there has been very few investigations conducted so far, taking into account these kind of aspects. Therefore, the present paper focused on examining the influence of morphology change on salinity concentration. The question that should be paid attention here is: how is the interaction between morphology change and salinity distribution in the Dinh An estuary, Vietnam? In this research, a three-dimensional model has been used to figure out the effects of morphology change on salinity distribution. The drawn conclusion is that the change of salinity is influenced by not only usual parameters as river discharge and tidal level but also another external force such as changes in the estuarine morphology. Furthermore, river mouth width is found to be directly proportional to the averaged salinity concentration. Therefore, the influence of morphology changes on salinity distribution should not be ignored when simulating salinity.