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The spatial and temporal distribution of relative sea-level change over the northwest European shelf seas has varied considerably since the Last Glacial Maximum, due to eustatic sea-level rise and a complex isostatic response to deglaciation of both near- and far-field ice sheets. Because of the complex pattern of relative sea level changes, the region is an ideal focus for modelling the impact of significant sea-level change on shelf sea tidal dynamics. Changes in tidal dynamics influence tidal range, the location of tidal mixing fronts, dissipation of tidal energy, shelf sea biogeochemistry and sediment transport pathways. Significant advancements in glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling of the region have been made in recent years, and earlier palaeotidal models of the northwest European shelf seas were developed using output from less well-constrained GIA models as input to generate palaeobathymetric grids. We use the most up-to-date and well-constrained GIA model for the region as palaeotopographic input for a new high resolution, three-dimensional tidal model (ROMS) of the northwest European shelf seas. With focus on model output for 1 ka time slices from the Last Glacial Maximum (taken as being 21 ka BP) to present day, we demonstrate that spatial and temporal changes in simulated tidal dynamics are very sensitive to relative sea-level distribution. The new high resolution palaeotidal model is considered a significant improvement on previous depth-averaged palaeotidal models, in particular where the outputs are to be used in sediment transport studies, where consideration of the near-bed stress is critical, and for constraining sea level index points.

International audience; Assessing how natural environmental drivers affect biodiversity underpins our understanding of the relationships between complex biotic and ecological factors in natural ecosystems. Of all ecosystems, anthropogenically important estuaries represent a 'melting pot' of environmental stressors, typified by extreme salinity variations and associated biological complexity. Although existing models attempt to predict macroorganismal diversity over estuarine salinity gradients, attempts to model microbial biodiversity are limited for eukaryotes. Although diatoms commonly feature as bioindicator species, additional microbial eukaryotes represent a huge resource for assessing ecosystem health. Of these, meiofaunal communities may represent the optimal compromise between functional diversity that can be assessed using morphology and phenotype-environment interactions as compared with smaller life fractions. Here, using 454 Roche sequencing of the 18S nSSU barcode we investigate which of the local natural drivers are most strongly associated with microbial metazoan and sampled protist diversity across the full salinity gradient of the estuarine ecosystem. In order to investigate potential variation at the ecosystem scale, we compare two geographically proximate estuaries (Thames and Mersey, UK) with contrasting histories of anthropogenic stress. The data show that although community turnover is likely to be predictable, taxa are likely to respond to different environmental drivers and, in particular, hydrodynamics, salinity range and granulometry, according to varied life-history characteristics. At the ecosystem level, communities exhibited patterns of estuary-specific similarity within different salinity range habitats, highlighting the environmental sequencing biomonitoring potential of meiofauna, dispersal effects or both.

The regular periodicity of astronomical tides allows their accurate prediction, and so it should be possible to determine how best to optimise the future distribution of arrays of tidal energy devices for any shelf sea region. By considering together the magnitude and phase of tidal currents over a shelf sea region, maximum aggregated power generation, with minimal periods of low generation, can be deduced. Here, we make use of the greedy algorithm to optimise future exploitation of the tidal stream resource over the northwest European shelf seas, a region which contains a world-leading tidal energy resource. We also apply a penalty function to the greedy algorithm, favouring the selection of future hypothetical sites where power generation would be out-of-phase with previously developed sites. Our results demonstrate that the Pentland Firth and Channel Islands would be optimal sites for parallel development for relatively low numbers of arrays, with important contributions from the Irish Sea for larger scale exploitation. Although there is minimal phase diversity between European tidal stream sites to deliver firm power generation, it is possible that the vertical tide could contribute to such baseload through the parallel development of lagoons or impoundments.