Contemporary Issues in Estuarine Physics

Estuaries are of high socioeconomic importance with twenty-two of the thirty-two largest cities in the world located on river estuaries. Estuaries bring together fluxes of fresh and saline water, as well as fluvial and marine sediments, and contain high biological diversity. Increasingly sophisticated field observation technology and numerical modeling have produced significant advances in our understanding of the physical properties of estuaries over the last decade. This book introduces a classification for estuaries before presenting the basic physics and hydrodynamics of estuarine circulation and the various factors that modify it in time and space. It then covers special topics at the forefront of research such as turbulence, fronts in estuaries and continental shelves, low inflow estuaries, and implications of estuarine transport for water quality. Written by leading authorities on estuarine and lagoon hydrodynamics, this volume provides a concise foundation for academic researchers, advanced students and coastal resource managers.

Arnoldo Valle-Levinson received a Ph.D. from the State University of New York in 1992 before going on to work at Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia). He joined the University of Florida (Gainsville) in 2005 where he is now a Professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering. His research focuses on bathymetric effects on the hydrodynamics of estuaries, fjords and coastal lagoons. Professor Valle-Levinson is the recipient of a CAREER award from the US National Science Foundation, a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Chile, and a Gledden Fellowship from the University of Western Australia. He has worked extensively in several Latin-American countries, where he also teaches courses on estuarine and coastal hydrodynamics. He is also an associate editor for the journals Continental Shelf Research and Ciencias Marinas.