HYDRODYNAMICS OF AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS: AN INTERFACE BETWEEN ECOLOGY, BIOMECHANICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL FLUID MECHANICS

The paper promotes an emerging research area at the interfaces between aquatic ecology, biomechanics and environmental fluid mechanics. This new area, Hydrodynamics of Aquatic Ecosystems, bridges these disciplines together and is defined as a study of flow-organism interactions at multiple scales with particular focus on relevant transport processes and mutual physical impacts. Being an important part of its mother disciplines, Hydrodynamics of Aquatic Ecosystems deals with two key interconnected issues: (i) physical interactions between flow and organisms (e. g. due to an interplay between flow-induced forces and reaction forces generated by organisms) and (ii) ecologically relevant mass-transfer-uptake processes (e. g. due to molecular and turbulent diffusion). Key concepts and tools of Hydrodynamics of Aquatic Ecosystems are outlined first and then a promising approach that may provide a unifying platform for coupling and integrating ecological, hydrodynamic and biomechanical processes, known as the double-averaging methodology (DAM), is discussed. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.