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MORPHODYNAMICS

Estuaries wrangle with the tides

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 908–909 (2019)Cite this article

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Rising sea level is a principal threat to coastal systems worldwide — but far from being a simple matter of landscapes doomed to drown, the story involves complex feedbacks with the same processes that threaten them. Now a modelling study shows that the size and shape of tidal estuaries may determine their fate — proffering a perspective for mitigation against future sea-level rise.

In the open ocean, gravitational effects of the Moon and Sun form tides only a few tens of centimetres high. Like waves at the beach, though, ocean tides slow, shorten and heighten as they move into shallow coastal waters, regularly amplifying to a range of 2–5 m or more between high and low water. With high tide levels a metre or more above mean sea level, one can readily understand how amplification of the tides could play an important role in future water levels — and potential drowning — at the coast3,4. But as the study by Leuven et al. demonstrates, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Not only does tidal amplification determine high water levels, but it also influences the volume of water transported into and out of an estuary on each tidal exchange. Known as the tidal prism, this is a key factor in determining the ability of tides to erode and transport sediment; or in other words, the ability to reshape and rebuild coastal estuaries in responses to rising sea level.

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  1. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Steven L. Goodbred Jr

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  1. Steven L. Goodbred Jr
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Correspondence to Steven L. Goodbred Jr.

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Goodbred, S.L. Estuaries wrangle with the tides. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 908–909 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0629-z

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