1. First Workshop held in Shanghai during 27-28 November 2008

“First International Workshop on the Fluvial Sediment Supply to the South China Sea”, the first of a series international meetings of the FluSed project, was held during 27-28 November 2008 in Shanghai (Figures 1 and 2). Thirty participants from 7 countries joined the workshop, including 10 from China, 2 from Germany, 2 from Indonesia, 1 from Malaysia, 2 from Philippines, 1 from Thailand, and 12 from Vietnam.

Total 18 oral presentations were given during the two-day workshop on various topics of fluvial sediments in the South China Sea and surrounding drainage basins, including two keynote speeches (given by Prof. Pinxian Wang of Tongji University and Prof. Karl Stattegger of Kiel University). The topics mainly include: fine-grained detrital sediment discharge to the South China Sea, Mekong River discharge and its delta evolution, sediment input from Philippines rivers, river discharge of coast rivers of Peninsular Malaysia, changes of coastline and delta evolution in western Indonesia, and paleoceanography and sedimentation evolution of the South China Sea.

Participants spent a few hours in the afternoon session of the second day to discuss how to efficiently work for the project’s scientific objectives and to further cooperate together. Some practical results have been obtained: (1) collect and measure river sediments and water at same laboratory routines to set up a comparable dataset; (2) probably organize a SONNE cruise in the South China Sea to investigate incised valley evolution since the last glacial maximum; (3) encourage bilateral cooperation to access some parts of the project’s scientific objectives, including fieldwork sampling, scientific visits, and student exchanges; (4) decide to organize the second workshop in HoChiMin City in Vietnam during November 2009.

In the evening of 26 November 2008, just before the workshop, Dr. Zhifei Liu, leader of the project, organized the First Steering Group Meeting of the project. Five members attended the meeting, including members of China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam. Dr. Liu introduced the description of the project and then participants discussed all aspects of the project. Finally, participants approved the Terms of Reference and the Workplan (2008-2009).

The workshop was organized by the IOC/WESTPAC and the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji University. The major budget was provided generously by the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

2. Fieldwork carried in Malaysia during 4-13 February 2009

A fieldwork of river sediment sampling was carried out in Malaysia during 4-13 February 2009 (Figures 3 and 4). Dr. Zhifei Liu, Dr. Jianru Li, and Hao Wang (mater student) of Tongji University and Dr. Edlic Sathiamurthy, Dr. Sunny Goh Eng Giap, and John Joseph Jinap of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu joined the fieldwork. The fieldwork is among the activities of the WESTPAC FluSed project.

Total 19 river sediment samples were taken from four major rivers in Malaysia, including the Kelanan River, Phang River, and Terengganu River in eastern Peninsular Malaysia, and the Rejang River in northwestern Borneo. The samples will be analyzed for clay mineralogy and elemental geochemistry to evaluate the detrital discharge to the South China Sea from Malaysia.

During the fieldwork scientific visit, Dr. Zhifei Liu was invited to give a one-day seminar with three talks, titled “Introduction to the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University”, “Clay minerals in surface sediments of the South China Sea and surrounding fluvial drainage basins: Source and transportation”, and “Sedimentary response of Dansgaard/Oeschger events in the tropical South China Sea”. About 70 attendants joined the seminar.

The director of the Institute of Oceanography, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Prof. Noor Azhar M. Shazili, organized a meeting with major researchers in its institute to discuss the potential cooperation in marine geology study, seismic survey on the Sunda shelf in the southern South China Sea, and graduate student exchanges between the two institutions. A preliminary result has been obtained to have a first seismic survey on the Sunda shelf during September 2009. The survey will use the Chirp seismic profiler of Tongji University and the Research Vessel of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. The group people also visited the vessel after the meeting.