Defining a typology for Danish coastal waters

A typology has been developed for the Danish coastline, most of which is located in a region with a strong physical and biological gradients. It was found necessary to use different criteria for characterizing the open water coast and estuaries. The open water coast was characterized with re-spect to salinity, depth, wave exposure and tidal influence, whereas estuaries were characterized with respect to bottom salinity, degree of stratification, the ratio of residence time to surface run-off and sluice-control. The approach results in dividing the Danish coastal waters into 15 different types. It, however, still remains to be analyzed whether this typology is useful when considering different biological quality elements as indicators of water quality.