Assessing confinement in coastal lagoons

Measures of transport scale in aquatic systems can contribute to the formulation of definitions of indicators of the system's ecological properties. This paper addresses confinement, a specific transport scale proposed by biological scientists as a parameter that can capture and synthesize the principal properties that determine the spatial structure of biological communities in transitional environments. Currently, there is no direct experimental measure of confinement. In this study, a methodology based on the accumulation rate within a lagoon of a passive tracer of marine origin is proposed, the influences of different factors in the calculation of confinement are analyzed, and general recommendations are derived. In particular, we analyze the spatial and the temporal variability of confinement and its sensitivity to the seasonal variability of climatic forcing, the inputs from rivers and the parameterization of the tidal exchanges. The Lagoon of Venice is used as a case study. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.