Continental shelf width

The general environmental situation in the coastal regions of the Black Sea is very complicated and is close to critical [3]. The recent decades have witnessed growing pollution of waters with total phosphorus and nitrogen (Danube seaside), petroleum products (nearby Sebastopol and the Georgian coast), detergents and phenols (the southern coast of Crimea), phenols and pesticides (Odessa coast). Here the quality of coastal waters is determined not so much by the source of the pollutants and the width of the continental shelf, but by the nature and intensity of currents in the particular regions. 

When the width of the shelf is much larger than the baroclinic Rossby radius, the mixed modes become quasi-barotropic (Huthnance, 1978) and stratification follows the barotropic motions of the waves passively without having an impact on the properties of these waves, which are denoted as Continental Shelf Waves (CWS). 

In the bottom topography of the sea, one can clearly distinguish three principal structures the shelf, the continental slope, and the deep-water basin. The shelf occupies up to 25% of the total area of the seafloor and, on average, is restricted to sea depths of 100-200 m. It reaches its greatest width (more than 200 km) in the northwestern part of the sea, which is entirely located within the shelf zone. Almost over the entire extension of the eastern and southern coasts of the sea, the shelf is very narrow (only a few kilometers wide) in the western part of the sea, it is wider (a few tens of kilometers). 

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