In many industrial processes or natural phenomena coupled heat and mass transfer and fluid flow take place in configurations combining a clear fluid and a porous medium. Since the pioneering work by Beavers and Joseph (1967), the modelling of such systems has been a controversial issue, essentially due to the description of the interface between the fluid and the porous domains. The validity of the so-called one-domain approach - more intuitive and numerically simpler to implement - compared to a two-domain description where the interface is explicitly accounted for, is now clearly assessed. This paper reports recent developments and the current state of the art on this topic, concerning the numerical simulation of such flows as well as the stability studies. The continuity of the conservation equations between a fluid and a porous medium are examined and the conditions for a correct handling of the discontinuity of the macroscopic properties are analyzed. A particular class of problems dealing with thermal and double diffusive natural convection mechanisms in partially porous enclosures is presented, and it is shown that this configuration exhibits specific features in terms of the heat and mass transfer characteristics, depending on the properties of the porous domain. Concerning the stability analysis in a horizontal layer where a fluid layer lies on top of a porous medium, it is shown that the onset of convection is strongly influenced by the presence of the porous medium. The case of double diffusive convection is presented in detail.