Importance of grid-cell area in estimation of residual fluxes

PERILLO, GERARDO M. E.; PICCOLO, M CINTIA

Estuaries

Estuarine Research Federation

Lugar: Washington, DC; Año: 1998 vol. 21 p. 14 - 28

0160-8347

Estimation of residual fluxes in estuarine cross sections is a very important procedure to establish, amongothers aspects, residence time of contaminants, circulation pattern, and sediment transport dynamics. However, theanalytical procedure to obtain such values is not trivial and is presented in detail, demonstrating the importance of thegrid-cell area as a weighting element in the calculation of spatial averages. The procedure is tested with four differentgrid designs and it is shown that grids with proportional columns and rows are the only ones that do not introducestatistical noise in the estimation of the residual fluxes. The four designs are also tested with data from a cross sectionof the Bahia Blanca Estuary (Argentina), results again show that the proportional columns and rows grid provide thebest approach in calculating residual fluxes.