ABSTRACT
For the present purposes, Environmental Fluid Mechanics (and the role of rotation in environmental žows) may be considered conveniently in terms of žuid motions and associated mass and heat transport processes that occur in the Earth’s atmosphere and hydrosphere on local or regional scales. In particular, and to distinguish such žows from those within the larger (global) domain covered by geophysical žuid dynamics (see, e.g., Cushman-Roisin 2004; McWilliams 2006; Vallis 2006), emphasis is placed on the inžuence of the žows upon (and their interaction with) manmade facilities and structures and their responses to anthropogenic releases of mass and heat. ›ough the e§ects of the Earth’s rotation are known to be important for the global circulations of the atmosphere and oceans (see, e.g., Gill 1982), smaller-scale environmental žows may also be a§ected by the presence of the Coriolis acceleration associated with the background rotation of the Earth. Examples (Bowden 1983; Mann and Lazier 1991; Rubin and Atkinson 2001) are (a) tidal žows in coastal waters, (b) estuarine and river outžow plumes, (c) waves and currents in large lakes and reservoirs, (d) boundary layer žows and sediment transport in coastal regions, and (e) coastal upwelling, though there are many others. Many important global-scale processes (e.g., the oceanic transport of pollutants (Dahlgaard 1995; Kershaw and Baxter 1995)) have environmental consequences on a local scale (and vice versa), but they are not included herein. For hydrospheric žows, attention is limited to rotationally-inžuenced processes operating inshore of the continental shelf break in the marine/estuarine environment or within the interiors/boundary
layers of large lakes and reservoirs in the freshwater environment. Rotational e§ects associated with atmospheric žows (and the atmospheric boundary layer, in particular) are treated elsewhere in this volume and will not be considered explicitly here.
