Hydrodynamic of Guaratuba Bay , PR , Brazil

The bay of Guaratuba is an estuary located in the coastal plain of the coast of the Paraná State, Brazil, in its southern premise (25 51.80'S, 48 38.20'W Figure 1). The bay has an area of 50,19 km and it is inserted in the municipal districts of Guaratuba, to the South, that has a population of 27.257 inhabitants, and Matinhos Municipality, to the North, which has 24.184 inhabitants (IBGE, 2003). Its South margin is well occupied by urban settlements and agricultural enterprises and the North margin is covered by areas of well preserved mangrove swamps. It is the second largest estuarine system of the coast of Paraná and it receives the waters from some rivers as Cubatão and São João, with more than 80 m /s of mean runoff. Many tidal creeks surround both margins, ensuring tidal flat inundation due to the semidiurnal tides of up to 1.5 m (spring tidal range). Its communicates with the Atlantic Ocean through a mouth of approximately 500 meters wide and 27 m of maximum depth, and it is prolonged inside of the continent for about 15 kilometers. Its margins' vegetation corresponds to the one of mangrove swamp areas, and the depth of the water body at the inner regions, in some points, reaches up to 6 meters 1998). The bottom layer salinity presents seasonal variations, reaching higher values in the winter and lower in the summer (respectively 37 and 3), while the temperature gets up to 28 C and to lower values of at least 15 C, according to the station & 1997). The system was formerly studied by (1953), but of that time to the end of the XX Century, no work on the local dynamics was developed. Until recently, no information was found in the literature regarding the distributions of the physical parameters of the bay, like the regime of rivers, currents and tides, for instance, being the few existent works related mainly to studies of the biological characteristics of the area or related with some particular specie or family. This work presents the first modern The main objectives of the full study are related with the dynamic of the area, the land use and occupation (and of the bay waters, with the growing mariculture activity), the hydrological regime of the basins that discharge fresh water into the bay, the flow of materials, the estuary-platform interactions, the erosional problems, etc. It implies in an integrated study to understand the local dynamics, from the interaction continentestuary to the interface estuary-continental platform. The work intends to study and to model all the compartments of the system (hydrology, hydrography, sedimentology and materials flow), creating elements and knowledge to allow progresses in the aspect of the potential impacts in the environment and in the populations and its activities (mariculture, tourism, fisheries, generation of energy, land use, sewage, etc.). The present work will briefly describe the sampling methods used during a full survey directed to understand the general circulation of the bay as well as fresh water runoff, among others. The result of the survey will also help in describing the general dynamic of the estuarine waters as well as in obtaining classical estuarine parameters, based in circulation and stratification characteristics.