A UNIFIED APPROACH TO THE MODELING OF THE VENICE LAGOON ADRIATIC SEA ECOSYSTEM

In this paper, a first attempt at analysing the macronutrients' mass b alance between the north Adriatic coastal sea and the lagoon of Venice by means of a nested and coupled model is presented. The hydrodynamic part of the model simulates the evolution of the sea-surface elevatio n and of the three-dimensional field of velocity, temperature, salinit y and density. Tides, winds, river discharges, thermal and evaporative fluxes are included as forcings. Two models are nested in order to ha ndle the correct spatial scales. The first one, with a resolution of a bout 10 km, is able to describe the basin and sub-basin scale hydrodyn amical features; the second one, with a resolution of 1.2 km, describe s the interactions between the open sea and the lagoon. This last circ ulation model has been coupled with a simple primary production submod el, in order to investigate the short-term dynamic of the ecosystem du ring spring time. Results show that, in some instances, the primary pr oduction can be sustained by macronutrients' fluxes coming from the co astal area. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.