Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Definition and classification of estuaries
- 2 Estuarine salinity structure and circulation
- 3 Barotropic tides in channelized estuaries
- 4 Estuarine variability
- 5 Estuarine secondary circulation
- 6 Wind and tidally driven flows in a semienclosed basin
- 7 Mixing in estuaries
- 8 The dynamics of estuary plumes and fronts
- 9 Low-inflow estuaries: hypersaline, inverse, and thermal scenarios
- 10 Implications of estuarine transport for water quality
- Index
- References
10 - Implications of estuarine transport for water quality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Definition and classification of estuaries
- 2 Estuarine salinity structure and circulation
- 3 Barotropic tides in channelized estuaries
- 4 Estuarine variability
- 5 Estuarine secondary circulation
- 6 Wind and tidally driven flows in a semienclosed basin
- 7 Mixing in estuaries
- 8 The dynamics of estuary plumes and fronts
- 9 Low-inflow estuaries: hypersaline, inverse, and thermal scenarios
- 10 Implications of estuarine transport for water quality
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter, some implications of estuarine transport for water quality are discussed. This is not an exhaustive review of all physical processes potentially important to water quality in estuaries. Rather, the focus is on (1) some fundamental relationships, concepts, and helpful idealizations (e.g., evolution equations for reactive scalars, transport time scales, scaling and non-dimensional numbers), (2) some common and often dominant physical processes in terms of their influence on estuarine water quality (e.g., stratification and turbulent mixing), and (3) some less prevalently discussed but probably widely important issues regarding high-frequency (i.e., intradaily) processes and their influence on water quality.
Here, “water quality” refers to the full range of suspended constituents (or “scalars”, i.e., non-vector quantities) in an estuarine water column. These constituents may be dissolved or particulate, mineral, chemical, or biological, or they may represent physical properties of the water (e.g., temperature). The spatial distribution of a water quality constituent is influenced by the hydrodynamic environment in which it is suspended, but it may be additionally subject to motility, positive buoyancy, or negative buoyancy (e.g., some phytoplankton or zooplankton). Water quality scalars may be conservative (i.e., non-reactive, such as salt) or non-conservative (i.e., reactive and thereby potentially changing in concentration or form during transit; e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, or phytoplankton). Hydrodynamic and transport processes are important not only because they “move stuff around” but also because, in the case of reactive scalars, those processes may expose the scalars to a range of environments, each of which may be associated with distinct rates of scalar transformation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Contemporary Issues in Estuarine Physics , pp. 273 - 307Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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