Preface: Oceanographic processes on the continental shelf: observations and modeling

Oceanographic processes in the shallow continental shelf and coastal regions have a major impact on human life, since a large fraction of human population lives within 100 km of the shoreline (Halpern et al., 2008). At the same time, the pro- cesses occurring in these regions are difficult to analyze and disentangle, because of their intrinsic complexity, the vari- ability of temporal and spatial scales, their multidisciplinary nature, and the influence of offshore boundary conditions (Dickey, 2003; Mitchell et al., 2015).