The Physical Oceanography of the Great Barrier Reef:
Book Chapter ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Here, we emphasise a fundamental difference between the shelf waters of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and other parts of the world. The water circulation over the GBR continental shelf, like that of continental shelves worldwide, is strongly influenced by the circulation in the adjoining sea. This circulation is dominated by the South Equatorial Current that is highly mesoscale turbulent and takes the form of jets and eddies. As these jets approach the continental shelf, they bifurcate to the north and south. Commonly, shelf waters have a gentle slope, with few shoals, islands, and reefs until the shelf break. In contrast, the GBR has approximately 2,500 reefs, resulting in a flow field largely uncorrelated with the mesoscale turbulence in the adjoining Coral Sea. The currents among reefs are generally dominated by strong tidal currents, topographic eddies, jets, topographically driven upwelling and downwelling, shear zones, stagnation zones, and topographically steered flows. The reefs generate a ‘bioengineered’ physical oceanography dominated by a number of processes including (1) Bernoulli tidal upwelling in reef passages, (2) inflow of oceanic water from wave breaking at the reef crests, (3) swift tidal flow through reef passages and the channelisation of the tidal flow on the shelf, (4) the wind deflecting intruding oceanic water back out to sea, (5) deflection of the mean currents around a reef matrix through the ‘sticky water’ effect, (6) convergence of opposing tidal waves in the southern GBR, and (7) reduction by the reefs of the inflow into the GBR from oceanic water.
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Publication Name
Oceanographic Processes of Coral Reefs
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ISBN/ISSN
978-1-003-32042-5
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Pages Count
26
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Publisher
CRC Press
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Publisher Location
Boca Raton, FL, USA
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DOI
10.1201/9781003320425-3