F9. Prediction of estuarine process regime changes under system instability or evolutionary progression

This session will deal with the complex topic of assessing and modelling the estuarine process regime changes under system instability, evolutionary progression or climate change. This could include modelling of physical, chemical or biological changes via estuarine evolution and/or changes in the forcing regimes. Topics that meaningfully link the chemical or biological changes to physical changes would extend the reach of the session. Both long and short term processes may be considered.

Possible topics include:

• New approaches to modelling eg active agents, stochastic models
• Improving the synergies between modelling and data collection and analysis
• Modelling in the presence of very different time scales
• Modelling estuary evolution over long time periods
• Modelling changes over very long times
• Incorporating variability of external conditions into models
• Modelling to support day to day management

A good idea for the end of the session would be a discussion with a topic partly dependent on the participant's contributions and focusing on a common aspect, e.g. 'What level of parameterisation is needed/possible to incorporate process regime fluctuations and over what time and spatial scales can we be confident of our predictions ?'