Modeling and Monitoring of Coastal Ocean, Nearshore and Estuarine Environments

Dear Colleagues,

The coastal environment is becoming more vulnerable due to climate change and its associated impacts such as sea level rise, significant coastal erosion, coastal hazards and compound flooding, among others. Additionally, there is a vast number of natural resources in coastal ecosystems such as coastal wetlands, fisheries and shellfisheries that require sustainable management and restoration as well as major blue economy initiatives and new technology developments in coastal oceans. Advancements in computer modeling, new technologies in remote sensing, development of autonomous underwater and surface vehicles as well as the expanding in situ measurement networks enhance coastal predictions, forecasting and monitoring in coastal ocean, nearshore and estuarine environments.

We encourage submissions with research and applications of modeling systems and coastal monitoring systems to study hydrodynamics, morphodynamics, and hydrology of the coastal environments.

We are particularly encouraging submissions from the following areas:

(1) Coastal Ocean Modeling applications

These include coupled atmosphere, wave, ocean, sediment transport, ecosystem, riverine and hydrological modeling studies and applications that investigate or forecast the coastal ocean state at the near-coastal, shelf, estuarine and nearshore scales for:

• Meteorological events and natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, or meteorological tsunamis;
• Any natural or artificial features for shore protection;
• Remedies for improved boat navigation;
• Ocean energy converters.

(2) Coastal Remote Sensing applications and Geospatial Techniques

Application of previously established geospatial techniques to new domains or development of new geospatial techniques to interpret remote sensed data from satellites, land stations (i.e., H/F radar) airplanes or unmanned aircraft systems applied to:

• Coastal waters;
• Shorelines (e.g., barrier islands, beaches, cliffs);
• Beach features (e.g., dunes, sandbars);
• Coastal wetlands (e.g., marshes, river deltas).

(3) Coastal land and/or ocean monitoring with autonomous systems, including

• Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS); 
• Remotely operated vehicles (ROV); 
• Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV);
• Autonomous surface vehicles (ASV).

(4) Coastal Change Prediction/Forecast Systems

Application and development of operational or pre-operational prediction and forecast systems at near-coastal scales including but not limited to:

• High-resolution applications of variable resolution grids, unstructured grids or nested systems;
• Coupled model applications to study wind–wave, wave–current and ocean–atmosphere interactions;
• Modeling systems with applications for water quality, habitat suitability, ecosystem and ecological effects;
• Multi-resolution applications to understand the impact of global large-scale dynamics on the near-coastal environment.

(5) Synthesis of coastal data and models for improved decision making

Any studies that combine large scale in situ monitoring or geospatial monitoring with ocean modeling in the coastal environments to inform management actions and strategical coastal planning.

Dr. Mustafa Kemal Cambazoglu
Dr. Zafer Defne
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.