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Introduction
To develop an understanding of the fluid mechanical processes which control the sources, pathways and fates of anthropogenic influences in various components of a river basin and in the hydrologically inter-connected basin as a whole.
Further, to collaborate with other groups within and outside of CWR to use this understanding to construct predictive ecological models which may be used to simulate the short and long-term impacts of anthrogenic inputs on river basin systems.
Background
Work in this area commenced in the period 1982 - 1991, with the establishment of the Centre for Environmental Fluid Dynamics, the objective of which was 'to understand individual transport and mixing processes in stratified lakes, estuaries and coastal seas.' The second period of funding (1992-1999) has allowed us to broaden these terms of reference and the focus has become 'the interaction between individual transport and mixing processes in stratified lakes, estuaries and coastal seas.' This focus led to a better understanding of the action of internal waves in the distribution wind and tidal energies throughout the water body and so providing an energy source for the horizontal and vertical mass transport mechanisms within the water bodies.
Future Plans
Use field, laboratory and numerical investigations of underlying processes to:
- understand the horizontal and vertical transport and mixing resulting from the cumulative effect of a multitude of interacting physical processes, both within components and across components of a river basin, and so develop a generic description of the processes.
- formulate biogeochemical state variables that have a generic response to external factors, understand hydrobiological interactions between transport, mixing and these state variables, and understand the transformations of attributes of these state variables.
- understand the increase in diversity of time and space scales as we move to whole river basin simulations, and formulate methods for balancing the resolution with the complexity of a chaotic nature associated with the increased diversity.
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