Time Scale Variations of Estuarine Stratification Parameters and Impact on the Food Chains of the Chesapeake Bay

Abstract

There are three basic premises in this paper. One is that many species which utilize estuarine waters during part or all of their life cycle stages represent successful specific food chains for which the growth and reproduction of each of their lower trophic level food sources is close to optimal. The second is that this optimization results in a selection from among the thousands of species potentially available from marine and fresh water inputs for those species whose physiological and behavioral responses to the physical and chemical (including nutrient sources) environment insure that there will be temporal and spatial ‘windows’ during which they can grow and reproduce at their maximum rates. The third, which will form the major portion of the paper, is that in the estuary, periodic and aperiodic climatic forcing functions, i.e. temperature cycles resulting in ice melting (freshwater runoff), wind and storm events, insolation, produce water circulation patterns and density gradients of salinities and nutrients whose spatial dimensions range from meters to tens of kilometers.