Around the estuary of the Zhuo-Shui River in Taiwan, the waters recede during the winter, causing an increase in bare land area and exposing a large amount of fine earth and sand particles that were deposited on the riverbed. Observations at the site revealed that when northeastern monsoons blow over bare land without vegetation or water cover, the fine particles are readily lifted by the wind,...

Spatial radionuclides distribution was studied in recent estuarine sediments in the Krka River Estuary. Sediment samples were analyzed for 40K and 232Th by gamma-spectrometry. Activities of 40K were found in the range of 18–457 Bq kg–1 and activities of 232Th in range of 1.9–29.4 Bq kg–1. Distribution of 232Th activities follows that of 40K, with correlation coefficients higher than 0.97 in all...

Measurements in the macro-tidal Daly Estuary show that the presence of an undular tidal bore contributed negligibly to the dissipation of tidal energy. No recirculation bubble was observed between a trough and the following wave crest in the lee waves following the undular bore. This differs to stationary undular bores in laboratory experiments at larger Froude numbers where a recirculation bub...

Aquatic ecosystems around the world face serious threats from anthropogenic contaminants. Results from 8 years of field and laboratory investigations indicate that sublethal contaminant exposure is occurring in the early life stages of striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary, a population in continual decline since its initial collapse during the 1970s. Biologically significant levels of poly...

The spatial and temporal variations of mercury (Hg) in sediments of the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) and the surrounding coastal area (South China Sea) were studied. In surface sediments, the concentrations of Hg ranged from 1.5 to 201ng/g, with an average of 54.4ng/g, displaying a decreasing trend with the distance from the estuary to the open sea. This pattern indicates that the anthropogenic em...

A 3D numerical model with orthogonal curvilinear coordinate in the horizontal direction and sigma coordinate in the vertical direction has been developed. This model is based on POM (the Princeton Ocean Model). In this model a second moment turbulence closure sub-model is embedded, and the stratification caused by salinity and temperature is considered. Furthermore, in order to adapt to estuary...

Determination of Mercury in Biological Sample in Muar River Estuary, West Johor, Malaysia. This study was carried out at the Estuary of Muar River, west Johor, Malaysia. Different types of biota species namely Crassostrea irredalei, Perna viridis and Anadara granosa were collected all through the torrential rainy season in November 2005. These biota species were dried and then cooked in an acid...

Analysis of suspended particulate material (SPM) collected from the Columbia River and its estuary in 2007– 2008 revealed the ubiquitous presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from several distinct sources. The two dominant ones were: (1) a suite of non-alkylated, three to five-ringed compounds derived from high temperature combustion and (2) perylene, a compound of diagenetic orig...

The temporal response of the length of a partially-mixed estuary to changes in freshwater discharge, Qf , and tidal amplitude, UT , is studied using a 108 day time series collected along the length of the Hudson River estuary in the spring and summer of 2004 and a long-term (13.4 year) record of Qf , UT , and near-surface salinity. When Qf was moderately high, the tidally-averaged length of the...