Estuaries, bays and contiguous coastal seas are the world's most valuable, and yet most vulnerable marine ecosystems. Fundamental to the protection and management of these important resources is an understand- ing of the physical processes involved which affect the circulation, mixing, and transport of salt, nutrients and sediment. Residual Currents and Long-Term Transport processes appear to have direct control over freshwater inflows, contaminant loadings, dispersion and transport of sediments and nutrients, and causes of declining living resources. This volume provides a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the research results on these processes in estuaries and bays. Contributions from ten countries include results based on theoretical formulations, analyses of field data, numerical models and case studies.

Inhalt

I. Introduction.- Interdisciplinary Estuarine Research: A Challenge for the Future.- II. Residual Currents.- The Dynamics of Long-Term Mass Transport in Estuaries.- On the Lagrangian Residual Velocity and the Mass-Transport in a Multi-Frequency Oscillatory System.- Residual Circulation in Shallow Estuaries: Shear, Stratification and Transport Processes.- Dynamics of Tidally Forced Basin-wide Coastal Eddies.- Three-Dimensional Modeling of the Tidally Induced Residual Circulation Off Southwest Nova Scotia.- Residual Currents in the Western Dutch Wadden Sea.- Impacts of Relative Sea-level Rise on Evolution of Shallow Estuaries.- Wind Domination of Residual Tidal Transport in a Coastal Lagoon.- III. Salt Mixing and Transport.- Salinity Stratification and Vertical Shear Transport in an Estuary.- Longitudinal Dispersion of Salt in the Volkerak Estuary.- Mixing and Trapping in Australian Tropical Coastal Waters.- Control of Estuarine Salinities by Coastal Ocean Salinity.- Mixing Processes in a Numerical Model of the Western Dutch Wadden Sea.- Numerical Simulation of Tidal Dispersion Around a Coastal Headland.- Circulation in the Salt Vedge Estuaries.- IV. Sediment Transport.- Laboratory Experiments on Sedimentation of Fine-grained Sediments: A State-of-the-Art Review in the Light of Experiments with the Delft Tidal Flume.- Estuarine Boundary Layers and Sediment Transport.- Morphological Processes in Shallow Tidal Seas.- Suspended Sediment Transport Processes in the Southern North Sea.- Some Observations on Erosion and Entrainment of Estuarine Fluid Muds.- A Plume Front in Hangzhou Bay and its Role in Suspended Sediment Transport.- Currents and Sediment Transport in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan.- Simulation of Suspended Sediment Dispersion in the North Sea.- V. Field Observations and Other Applications.- Variations in Horizontal Density Gradient Forcing at the Mouth of an Estuary.- Persistence of Residual Currents in the James River Estuary and its Implication to Mass Transport.- Measurements of Residual Currents in the Coastal Zone with the OSCR HF Radar: A Review of Results from the May 1985 Experiment.- Analyses of Flux Measurements in the River Mersey.- Dynamics of Peel-Harvey Estuary, Southwest Australia.- On the Summer Circulation in New York Bight and Contiguous Estuarine Waters.- Salinity Intrusion and Residual Circulation in Delaware Bay During the Drought of 1984.- Wind and River Induced Fluctuations in a Small, Shallow, Tributary Estuary.- Circulation Dynamics in Mt. Hope Bay and the Lower Taunton River.- VI. Interdisciplinary Studies.- Recruitment in Estuarine Benthic Communities: The Role of Physical Processes.- A 3-D Eutrophication-diffusion Model of the Venice Lagoon: Some Applications.- List of Contributors.