Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 18 Issue 02

View Issue TOC
Volume 18, No. 2
Pages 158 - 171

OpenAccess

Harmful Algal Blooms and Their Assessment in Fjords and Coastal Embayments

By Allan D. Cembella , Diego A. Ibarra , Jorge Diogene, and Einar Dahl  
Jump to
Citation Copyright & Usage
First Paragraph

Coastal embayments are a broad category of an ecosystem type that may be loosely defined as an enclosed or semi-enclosed aquatic environment along a land-mass margin. Embayments are highly diverse, representing a spectrum of varying degrees of physical isolation from the open coast and hydrodynamic regime. Such systems include certain estuaries, lagoons, rías (“drowned estuaries”), firths, and fjords. At one extreme of the continuum, classic fjords, such as are found in Norway, Chile, and British Columbia, are typically deeply glaciated basins (often V-shaped) with steep sides, and are generally restricted to latitudes above 45° in both hemispheres. Fjordal water circulation patterns are characterized by surface outflow of buoyant freshwater, and an inward-bound compensation current, so-called estuarine circulation. Bottom water of fjords often tends to become anoxic, especially with the presence of a sill formed by excavated or scoured material accumulated towards the mouth of the inlet (Skjoldal et al., 1995) (Figure 1). By contrast, coastal lagoons, such as those found along the Mediterranean Sea (right), the Carolinas in the United States, and other parts of the Iberian coast, as well as in the tropics, are often shallow basins linked to the land’s margin, but lack the stratification parameters and circulation of fjords, and typically have a soft-bottom substrate.

Citation

Cembella, A.D., D.A. Ibarra, J. Diogene, and E. Dahl. 2005. Harmful algal blooms and their assessment in fjords and coastal embayments. Oceanography 18(2):158–171, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2005.51.

Copyright & Usage

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.