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APPENDIX C - ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON FLUSHING IN ESTUARIES
Citation:
Dettmann, E H. APPENDIX C - ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON FLUSHING IN ESTUARIES. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-822-B-01-003, 2001.
Description:
Water residence time is an important determinant of the sensitivity of the response of estuaries and other water bodies to nutrient loading. A variety of terms such as residence time, flushing time, transit time, turnover time, and age are used to describe time scales for transport and removal of materials that enter water bodies. Use of these terms in the literature is often inconsistent and sometimes imprecise, so that care must be exercised to determine the meaning of terms being used, to avoid misinterpretation or incorrect comparisons of data. This appendix contains definitions of terms, discussions of factors that affect flushing, and an overview of empirical and modeling methods for estimating residence times in estuaries.