This doctoral thesis deals with the biogeochemical processes taking place in estuarine systems known as 'rias', located at the NW of the Iberian Peninsula. Its realization has been possible thanks to financial support from the JAE-Program of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF), and the ‘INTERESANTE' project, funded by the CICYT. Additionally, it is a contribution to the Spanish LOICZ program (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone). An oceanographic characterization of the Northern Galician Rias is presented in Chapter 2. This chapter also involves an extensive analysis of summer upwelling and downwelling processes, winter shelf-water upwelling, and poleward intrusion in the northern Galician shelf. Chapter 3 deals with the fluvial contributions to the Northern Galician Rias, including the quantification of major and minor chemical elements (nutrient salts, trace elements) in the dissolved and particulate matter, chlorophyll-a, DIN, PON, DOC, POC and C/N ratio. In Chapter 4 the sediment-water fluxes of nutrients in a ria coastal systems are discussed. Fluxes driven by molecular diffusion and advective transport across sediment-water interfaces during tidal flooding for the Northern Galician Rias are calculated. Chapter 5 focuses on the hydrological, chemical and biological interactions in the Northern Galician Rias, exemplified by the case of the Ria of Barqueiro, identifying their oceanographic periods in relation to nutrient availability, primary production, phytoplankton biomass, taxonomic composition and hydrographic patterns.