The launch of Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments, a new interdisciplinary journal

Welcome to Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments (L&O:F&E), the new journal published by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) and Duke University Press.

Our aims and scope are to publish interdisciplinary papers dealing with the interplay of fluid dynamics and biological, chemical, and/or geological processes in aquatic systems. We encourage manuscripts treating research in any aspect of limnology and oceanography in which advection and/or diffusion or the mechanics of the medium interact with biological, chemical, or geological processes. We recognize a variety of approaches, including modeling, theory, and empiricism in the forms of both observation and experiments, from large-scale currents to organism-induced motions and molecular-level transfers. Interactions of fluid dynamics and transport processes with biology, chemistry, or geology, or any combinations of them are essential to L&O:F&E papers and define the uniqueness of the journal. Environments of interest include oceans, coastal seas, estuaries, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, groundwaters, and wetlands, as well as the mats, sediments, and rocks that underlie and are permeated by these waters and the atmosphere immediately above them. Appropriate topic areas include, but are not limited to, carbon dynamics, gas exchange, diagenesis, animal movement, hyporheic flows, life in boundary layers, sediment transport, particle coagulation, flow effects on ecosystems, groundwater discharge, biological feeding and growth, environmental fluid dynamics, biogeochemistry, hydrothermal flows, gel formation, nutrient uptake and release, and contaminant dispersal.

The statement that water is the key characteristic that links aquatic scientists is by no means controversial. Thirty years ago the interface between fluid dynamics and biology, chemistry, and geology was being explored by a handful of scientists who recognized the important contributions that each of these seemingly disparate fields could make to one another. Indeed, a number of seminal books emerged that stimulated several generations of students. Among them were the late Akira Okubo's (1980) Diffusion and Ecological Problems and Steve Vogel's (1981) Life in Moving Fluids. Of them, Okubo's was the more mathematical, stemming from his background and experience as a chemical-physical oceanographer, whereas Vogel's was more phenomenological, speaking directly to many who were students of biology. Both served, and continue to serve in their revisions (Vogel 1994; Okubo and Levin 2001), as excellent introductions and inspirations because they highlight and synthesize the interface between biology and fluids and, to a lesser extent, chemistry and mathematics.

It was not unreasonable for a beginning graduate student to assume that everyone else in science was like-minded. A rude awakening met many of us in new interdisciplinary fields as we learned that our submitted work was either too physical for biology or too biological for physics; students in other fields had similar experiences. Part of the problem stemmed from the ultimate frustration among journal editors–that of finding suitable reviewers for material submitted to their journals. In other words, few reviewers had suitable experience and abilities to evaluate interdisciplinary research.

Fortunately, times have changed, and many excellent articles, websites, research tomes, and textbooks treat the interface of fluid dynamics and biology, chemistry, or geology. Even the most recalcitrant undergraduate students are learning about Reynolds numbers and analogous nondimensional numbers used to describe competing fluid dynamic processes. Indeed, the role of water as a transport medium for diverse aquatic systems and their processes has emerged as an area of study within the last 10 to 15 years, as is evident from special sessions at conferences and journal articles. Such studies have addressed issues ranging from geochemical transport and reaction in sediments and fractured oceanic crusts, to the influence of turbulence on plankton dynamics, to macrophyte-flow interactions in coastal and wetland habitats. Not surprisingly, these efforts have come from diverse researchers in fields that include: biological, chemical, geological and physical limnology/oceanography; civil, chemical, and environmental engineering; mathematics; geography; geology; and the biological sciences (e.g., microbiology, botany, and ecology).

Such a diverse set of researchers have tended to publish their work in an equally diverse set of journals, where their contributions are sometimes viewed as curiosities by readers rather than a way to inform and educate readers. L&O:F&E is the journal devoted to the interface between fluid dynamics and biology, chemistry, and/or geology, where authors from diverse fields will be able to share their ideas, methods, and findings to advance the aquatic sciences. These contributions will also be directed to the larger community through two new sections that may not be familiar to readers of Limnology and Oceanography. The first is the “Significance to Aquatic Environments” section in the discussion, where authors will distill their results into a format accessible to the broader aquatic science community. This section will serve as a mechanism to inform and educate the broader audience about what they should be aware of in their own research. The second section will be a lay version of the abstract that will be provided to a nontechnical audience, including K–12 educators, so that the role and importance of fluid dynamic interfaces in aquatic sciences can inform the broader community.

As you might imagine, the goals of L&O:F&E are to publish research of the highest quality and make it available to the broadest audience possible, in keeping with ASLO's Limnology and Oceanography family of journals, and to attract a broad range of physical scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, including hydrologists and hydrogeologists. We will do so through the online publication of three kinds of contributions. Original articles describe, interpret, and discuss results of novel research from empirical, modeling, or theoretical studies. We are especially interested in manuscripts that integrate laboratory, field, and modeling/theoretical work. Original articles may include manuscripts presenting new ideas and hypotheses, based on existing findings. Brief reviews focus on important research questions and should provide innovative insights from already published data. They are meant to be provocative rather than exhaustive and should articulate future directions in the field. Comments and replies offer constructive discussion or useful critiques on L&O:F&E papers or relevant issues in the field. Their goal is to stimulate exchange of views to the benefit of the field and the readership.

We believe that some of the features of L&O:F&E will be attractive to both authors and readers. They include rapid and rigorous review, rapid publication online in HTML and PDF formats, color figures at no extra cost, high-quality publication from the leading society Advancing the Science of Limnology and Oceanography, and the opportunity to publish in a venue that will be read by other like-minded researchers and others in the field.

We have assembled an excellent group of associate editors (AEs) from a diversity of countries and fields (e.g., biology, biogeochemistry, engineering, geochemistry, hydrology, limnology, oceanography, and physics) that speak to the scope and readership of L&O:F&E. The AEs are all recognized leaders in their respective fields with editorial experience from a range of leading journals. They are responsible for selecting reviewers and navigating through their recommendations to render decisions on the manuscripts. They are the workhorses of any journal, but they could not achieve their goals without the dedicated work of anonymous reviewers who are the real heroes of the peer-review system. Let me thank you in advance for your thoughtful and timely reviews, and let me assure you that we will not ask you for more than four reviews in a single year and never more than one in a two-month period.

Lastly, let me take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support of the L&O:F&E concept over these many years (the idea dates to 1994), including Helen Schneider Lemay in the ASLO Business Office, Erich Staib and Rob Dilworth of Duke University Press, a large number of ASLO boards, and seven ASLO presidents: Bill Lewis, Pete Jumars, Jon Cole, Sybil Seitzinger, Carlos Duarte, Debbie Bronk, and John Downing. Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments is no longer just a theoretical construct.