Bar-built estuaries

Bar-built estuaries inland shallow bodies of water that usually run parallel to the coast and are isolated from the sea by a barrier island where one or more small inlets allow for connection with the ocean—also called coastal lagoon estuaries. 

McKee, B.A., Wiseman, W., and Inoue, M. (1995) Salt water intrusion and sediment dynamics in a bar-built estuary Terrebonne Bay, LA. In Changes in Fluxes in Estuaries, pp. 13-16, Olsen and Olsen, Copenhagen. 

Rivers transport material in several phases dissolved, suspended particulate and bed load. Physical and chemical processes within an estuary infiuence the transportation and transformation of this material, thereby affecting the net supply of material to the oceans. Several definitions and geomorphologic classifications of estuaries have been reviewed by Pe-rillo (1995). From a chemical perspective, an estuary is most simply described as the mixing zone between river water and seawater characterised by sharp gradients in the ionic strength and chemical composition. Geographic distinctions can be made between drowned river valleys, fjords and bar-built estuaries. They can alternatively be classified in terms of the hydrodynamic regime as ... 

Near shore, the interaction between the ocean and coastal rivers results in the formation of fresh-salt water interfaces, known as estuaries. Depending on coastal geology, they can assume various forms, such as fjords, drowned river valleys, or bar-built estuaries, characterized by barrier islands. Tidal effects, storms, and the mixing, or lack thereof, of salt water and freshwater strongly influence the biology... 

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