The modern Zhujiang River Delta has experienced the formation and evolution from drowned valley to delta, which is rich in regional characteristics. The research on the Zhujiang River Delta in the past hundred years is summarized into four paradigms: historical description, field investigation-scientific reasoning, instrument applied-discipline theory and “dynamic-sedimentary-morphologic” scale-crossing paradigm. Each illustrated by superb examples and documented. Based on the research of the authors and his team, this paper puts forward several propositions concerning the formation and evolution of the Zhujiang River Delta, which are substantially different from the existing literature, and makes necessary differentiation and analysis from multiple perspectives, including the millennial-scale changes of coastline since the transgression maximum, the mode of formation and evolution of the modern Zhujiang River Delta and the development and its mechanism of the major channels of the network in the delta. Finally, the approache of interdisciplinary, scale-crossing and time-space quantification concerning delta research are briefly discussed.

Zhujiang River  /  drowned valley  /  paradigm  /  delta  /  sub-delta  /  deposition body  /  evolution mode  /  interdiscipline  /  cross-scale  /  spatiotemporal quantification