Across most of the World's coastal zone there has been a geographic transition from naturally vegetated to human-altered land covers, both agricultural and urban. This transition has increased the nitrogen loads to coastal watersheds, and from watersheds to receiving estuaries. We modeled the nitrogen entering the watershed of Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts, and found that as the transition took pl...

We measured dissolved O2 concentrations, pCO2 values, and respiratory rates in five estuaries of the southeastern U.S. in October 1995 and July 1996. In the low-salinity sections of the coastal plain rivers, dissolved O2 saturation states were typically only 50%, while pCO2 values were over 4,000 matm. Respiratory rates measured concurrently in estuarine water averaged 8 and 23 mmol m23 d21 in ...

The present study aims to estimate effective diahaline turbulent salinity fluxes and diffusivities in numerical model simulations of estuarine scenarios. underlying method is based on a quantification mixing per class, which shown be twice the transport across respective isohaline. Using this relation, recently derived universal law mixing, predicting that average class times river run-off, can...

River runoff is an important driver of many physical, biological, and geochemical processes in 12 coastal shelf sea areas. The river-estuary-sea continuum represents a variety complex 13 interactions between the terrestrial freshwater discharge ocean water. estuaries are areas 14where initially interacts with seawater. related estuarine mixing 15 define source properties for river plumes, which...

Since its beginning in 1987, researchers and policymakers have touted the US Environmental Protection Agency National Estuary program (NEP) as one of the leading examples of collaborative institutions designed to resolve conflict and build cooperation at the watershed level. Using the NEP as an example, I summarize the advantages and disadvantages of collaborative institutions. Using data gathe...

Tidal creeks are widespread and abundant estuarine ecosystems, yet their ecological relevance is undervalued as reflected by the lack of research on these systems relative to larger, better-known estuarine systems (e.g. the Chesapeake Bay, the Albemarle–Pamlico Sound System, Florida Bay, to name a few). These better-known large estuaries contain numerous tidal creeks which, in comparison to the...

Meaningful evaluation of the ecological stresses imposed by man's release of heavy metals or radioisotopes into estuaries requires an improved understanding of the interactions between the waste materials and the functional components of the ecosystem. In this paper, we review and discuss the types of information required for the development of useful models for the cycling of contaminant metal...