Calculations of tidal prism are useful in determining the residence time of water (and pollutants) in an estuary.
[6] Additionally, there are correlations between tidal prism and amount of sediment deposited and exported in an estuary or inlet.
[7] Inlets with small tidal prisms have too little power to remove sand deposited from adjacent shores.
Inlets with large tidal prisms can erode sand and deposit it in ebb-tidal deltas in deeper waters (National Research Council).
Officer provides a model for simple tidal prism theory where the estuary is represented by a box with the inflow as the volume of river discharge at a salinity of 0, within the estuary, the river discharge mixes with the volume of the tide flooding in (Vp) from the ocean at oceanic salinity (So) and the mixed VR + VP) water flows out at ebb tide.