Advances in modeling of estuarine and coastal environments

Abstract

To protect the estuarine and coastal environments from pollutant loading and natural hazards, integrated models of estuarine and coastal environments are needed, to quantitatively determine the changes in estuarine and coastal environments because of anthropogenic and natural causes. This chapter reviews recent advances in the development and application of numerical models for estuarine and coastal environments, and some famous techniques, such as Chesapeake Bay modeling system, the hydrologic modeling system for the Everglades, and the UF–CH3D–IMS developed for Florida. The chapter covers major aspects—namely, integration of processes, resolution of complex geometries, numerical algorithms, and high performance modeling techniques. One of the major challenges in estuarine and coastal modeling is the accurate resolution of the complex geometries. Classical estuarine and coastal models use finite difference models with rectangular grids.