Estuaries are important environments both for natural and economic reasons. Assessing the impact of current climate changes and anthropogenic pressures on these systems is a complex task due to the strong interactions and feedbacks between hydrological, chemical and biological processes which contribute to govern the morphological evolution of these delicate systems. Estuarine dynamics is in fact governed by a variety of physical, chemical and biological processes, both natural and man-induced, acting over over a wide range of overlapping temporal and spatial scales. Learning from the analysis of case studies and exploiting the up-to-date knowledge about hydrological, morphological and biological processes, this open session aims at discussing to which limit it is possible to predict the natural and human-influenced evolution of estuaries, deltas, and lagoons.
Presentations are welcome about all the aspects involved in the problem: hydrology, hydrodynamics, morphological characterization, morphodynamics, sediment transport and the effect of cohesion, salinity intrusion, impact of climate change and sea-level rise, and societal or management implications, including for instance tidal hydropower production. Efforts towards multidisciplinary approaches and biogeomorphological modelling are especially appreciated.