Larvae of many intertidal species develop offshore and must cross the surf zone to complete their onshore migration to adult habitats. Depending on hydrodynamics, the surf zone may limit this migration, especially on reflective rocky shores. As a logistically tractable analog of a rocky shore environment, we carried out a comprehensive biological and physical study of the hydrodynamics of a ste...

[1] Turbulence in the surf zone, the shallow region adjacent to the shoreline, has a key role in beach erosion, fertilization, dispersal, and larval settlement of marine invertebrates, and microbial contamination dilution in beach waters. Breakingwave generated (the dominant source) surf zone turbulence is understood poorly. A new surf zone turbulent dissipation rate scaling is derived, that co...

The use of indicators for evaluating the microbiological quality of the marine surf-zone water is a worldwide practice. It is important that the indicator used, is the most relevant in relation to bathers’ health. It must be easy to detect and it must be cost effective. This paper reports the comparison between the occurrence of faecal coliforms and Escherichia coli in the marine surf-zone. Bot...

This paper presents the application of the open source non-hydrostatic wave-flow model SWASH to propagation of irregular waves in a barred surf zone, and the model results are discussed by comparing against an extensive laboratory data set. This study focus not only on wave transformation in the surf zone, but also on the numerical prediction of undertow and vertical distribution of turbulence ...

WANG, P. and KRAUS, N.C., 2005. Beach profile equilibrium and patterns of wave decay and energy dissipation across the surf zone elucidated in a large-scale laboratory experiment. Journal of Coastal Research, 21(3), 522–534. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The widely accepted assumption that the equilibrium beach profile in the surf zone corresponds with uniform waveenergy dissipatio...

Larvae of intertidal species develop at sea and must return to adult habitats to replenish populations. Similarly, nutrients, detritus and plankton provide important subsidies spurring growth and reproduction of macroalgae and filter-feeding invertebrates that form the foundation of intertidal communities. Together, these factors determine the density and intensity of interactions among communi...

Short-lived radium isotopes (223Ra and 224Ra) are used to investigate the potential association between groundwater discharge and microbial pollution at Huntington Beach, CA. We establish the tidally driven exchange of groundwater from the surficial beach aquifer across the beach face. Groundwater is found to be a source of nutrients (silica, inorganic nitrogen, and orthophosphate) to the surf ...

Most coastal structures have been built in surf zones to protect coastal areas. In general, the transformation of waves in the surf zone is quite complicated and numerous hazards to coastal communities may be associated with such phenomena. Therefore, the behavior of waves in the surf zone should be carefully analyzed and predicted. Furthermore, an accurate analysis of deformed waves around coa...