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Description:Interactions between coastal and offshore ecosystems are considered, focusing on four aspects. 1. Water exchange, crucial for most couplings is classified for two types of system: shallow coastal areas and narrow, deep shelf areas. 2. Mass balance studies of tidal flats, salt marshes, mangroves, fjord systems and coral reefs give a strong indication of recirculation of nutrients and suggest that imported organic material mostly remains in the nearshore areas. 3. Active transport is demonstrated for fish and crustacean species occupying coastal nurseries. Both crab and shrimp larvae are vertical migrators which by reacting to fine-tuned hydrodynamics are retained in favourable adult habitats. 4. Numerical modelling as a means of synthesizing relevant physical and biological processes is analyzed for several existing ecosystem models and recommendations for suitable techniques are made. Evaluation of present evidence shows that: a) on a global scale and of the scale of years to decades, outwelling is quantitatively insignificant in the biogeochemistry or productivity of the sea b) productivity of many coastal systems are determined in the short term more by recycling than by inputs, though the relationship between the two remains to be determined c) "information flows" in the form of oceanic populations using the coastal areas as nursery grounds are important. The intention of this work is to summarize some of the present evidence for the interactions between coastal and offshore ecosystems, and at the same time to reveal gaps in knowledge and to make recommendations for future work. Not every author has chosen the state-of-the-art approach. Some have preferred to concentrate on, from their point of view, crucial problems which need further elucidation. A few give a detailed analysis and synthesis of the coastal/offshore exchange. These differences are probably significant for our knowledge today - it is patchy in both space and depth. By examining different types of ecosystem it was our hope to scrutinize the generality of the six previously stated aspects of the coastal/offshore relationships. It was not possible, however, to obtain studies of all major systems. In particular, we did not include the tropical systems due mainly to the difficulty of assembling the necessary data.
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Sea Grant Document Number:CUIMR-W-86-004
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