Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Coastal and Estuarine Studies, Volume 53.

Coastal water quality, flooding, estuarine habitat diversity, and distribution of coastal organisms depend in part on the dynamics of the coastal water column. Particularly within coastal embayments and estuaries, areas within the influence of freshwater from surface and ground water sources, the water column may be stratified by temperature and/or salinity. Resulting density gradients affect the behavior of the water column, including mixing and transport processes. Understanding physical processes associated with buoyancy in the coastal oceans is a requisite first step towards understanding the effects of buoyancy on coastal processes, including geological, biological and geochemical aspects.

This volume presents 23 papers addressing various aspects of buoyancy in the coastal oceans, including plumes, tidal interaction with buoyancy, shelf dynamics and mixing processes, and estuarine dynamics of buoyancy. The interwoven common thread amongst these articles is how buoyancy processes affect the density stratification and dynamics of shallow coastal flows.