Estuaries and Wetlands are important coastal resources which are subject
to a great deal of environmental stress. Dredging, construction,
creation of intertidal wetlands, regulation of fresh- water flow, and
pollution are just a few of the activities which affect these coastal
systems. The need to predict the effects of these perturbations upon
ecosystem dynamics, particularly estuarine fisheries, as well as on
physical effects, such as sedimentation and salt intrusion, is of
paramount importance. Prediction requires the use of models, but no
model is likely to be satisfactory unless fundamental physical,
chemical, sedimentological, and biological processes are quantitatively
understood, and the appropriate time and space scales known. With these
considerations in mind, the Environmental Laboratory, U. S. Army
Engineer Haterways Experiment Station, * Vicksburg, Mississippi,
sponsored a workshop on "Estuarine and Wetland Processes and Water
Quality Modeling" held in New Orleans, June 1979. The contents of this
volume have been selected from the workshop papers. The resulting book,
perhaps more than any other symposium proceed- ings on estuaries and
wetlands, attempts to review important pro- cesses and place them in a
modeling context. There is also a distinct applied tinge to a number of
the contributions since some of the research studies were motivated by
environmental assessments. The difference in title between this volume
and the workshop re- flects more accurately the contents of the
published papers.