Abstract
Abstract. The Gironde Estuary, one of the largest European ones, presents temporary low dissolved oxygen content in its fluvial section close to the Bordeaux urban area. In a context of population growth and of long-term environmental changes, the development of a high-frequency monitoring programme of the fluvial-estuarine system of the Gironde, called MAGEST (MArel Gironde ESTuary), had appeared essential to address current and future water-quality issues/evaluations. The objectives of the MAGEST survey program are to establish a reference database to improve the knowledge of the Gironde Estuary functioning, encompassing the aspects of hydrology, sediment dynamics and biogeochemistry. Through examples of results from intratidal to seasonal time scales, we demonstrate how such a long-term, high-frequency monitoring of a fluvio-estuarine system is of valuable interest to extract the main trends of its functioning and of the water quality in relation to external forcings (climatology, urban wastes, land use, ...) and to predict the future evolution of an estuary with global and environmental changes.
Highlights
With its 625 km2, the Gironde Estuary (S–W France) is one of the largest European estuaries in terms of surface area and mean annual discharges (∼1100 m3 s−1; Etcheber et al., 2007) (Fig. 1)
The objectives of the MAGEST network since 2005 was to establish a reference database to improve the knowledge of the Gironde Estuary functioning, encompassing the aspects of hydrology, sediment dynamics and biogeochemistry
After a brief description of the Gironde fluvio-estuarine system, we present the automated stations and examples of dataset to illustrate the interest of this monitoring
Summary
Regarding the ecosystem of the Gironde estuary, a critical problem is the occurrence of temporary low dissolved oxygen content in its fluvial section close to the Bordeaux urban area. The importance of time series in aquatic system has been recognized long ago to better understand the long-term changes (Neal, 2004; Baborowski et al, 2004; Blain et al, 2004; Horowitz, 2009) In such a context of long-term environmental changes, i.e. climate and population growth, the development of a longterm monitoring program of the fluvial-estuarine system of the Gironde had appeared essential for addressing current and future water-quality issues and evaluations. After a brief description of the Gironde fluvio-estuarine system, we present the automated stations and examples of dataset to illustrate the interest of this monitoring Such high-frequency time-series would permit to better understand the functioning of the Gironde Estuary and the evolution of its water quality in relation with external forcings We conclude on the interest of long-term, high frequency monitoring of water quality in transient waters, based on the use of real-time continuous systems, not common in estuarine systems
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