Land Ocean Interaction: processes, functioning and environmental management: a UK perspective.

The hydrochemical and physical functioning of UK river basins, estuaries and coastal waters through to the open sea are outlined in relation to British environmental research over the last ten or more years. An overview of a considerable body of published work is presented in the context of current findings and future research challenges. This is linked to this special issue of Science of the Total Environment 'Land Ocean Interaction: processes, functioning and environmental management: a UK perspective' for which this contribution provides a conclusion.

Apparent homeostasis in the surface salinity of a turbid macrotidal estuary.

A simple, one-dimensional tide-ignoring model has been fitted to surface salinity measured at monthly intervals over 3 years on an extensive sampling grid in the Humber and tidal Ouse on the North Sea coast of the UK. With a constant and uniform axial dispersion, estimated at 296+/-7 m2 s(-1) (95% confidence limits), model deviations vary systematically in space and time. Postulating an influx of dispersive tendency with fresh water largely eliminates the systematic variation in space.

ECoS, a framework for modelling hierarchical spatial systems.

A general framework for modelling hierarchical spatial systems has been developed and implemented as the ECoS3 software package. The structure of this framework is described, and illustrated with representative examples. It allows the set-up and integration of sets of advection-diffusion equations representing multiple constituents interacting in a spatial context.

Land-ocean interaction: processes, functioning and environmental management from a UK perspective: an introduction.

This paper provides a foreword to a special edition of Science of the Total Environment concerned with land-ocean interaction from a UK perspective as linked to processes, functioning and environmental management. The volume structure is presented together with an outline of the nature of the individual papers. The areas covered are: (1) freshwater chemistry, (2) riverine sedimentology, (3) tidal river, estuarine and coastal chemistry, (4) estuarine and coastal sediments and (5) shelf-sea-ocean linkages.