This group focuses on water motion in estuaries and on the continental shelf along with the associated transport of buoyancy, suspended particles, nutrients, and pollutants.

Physical oceanography at VIMS is extremely interdisciplinary, with ongoing collaboration with chemists and geologists within our department, biologists and resource managers elsewhere at VIMS, and scientists from various disciplines throughout the country and world. Cooperative research projects are underway with scientists from countries including Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and the U.K.

We have ongoing field projects in Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries as well as on the continental shelves of the east and west coasts of the U.S., and we are applying 3-dimensional numerical models to study circulation and associated dissolved and particulate transport in estuarine and shelf environments.

Research Areas

Major focal areas include:

• wind- and buoyancy-driven circulation on the inner shelf;
• effects of stratification on the bottom boundary layer;
• the dynamics of estuarine fronts;
• 3-D modeling of estuarine sediment transport and water quality,;
• the association of characteristic density- and tidally-driven estuarine circulation patterns with the fate and transport of pollutants;
• wind-wave evolution in estuaries and on shelves; and
• the physics governing sediment transport on shelves and in the surf zone.

Funding sources

Funding sources of ongoing research include the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, Sea Grant, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

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