This book presents a comprehensive overview of research and projects regarding climate change adaptation in coastal areas, providing government and nongovernment bodies with a sound basis to promote climate change adaptation efforts.According to the 5th Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), coastal zones are highly vulnerable to climate change, and climate-driven impacts may be further exacerbated by other human-induced pressures. Apart from sea-level rise, which poses a threat to both human well-being and property, extreme events such as cyclones and storm surges lead not only to significant damage to property and infrastructure, but also to salt water intrusion, groundwater salinisation, and intensified soil erosion, among many other problems. There are also numerous negative impacts on the natural environment and biodiversity, including damage to important wetlands and habitats that safeguard the overall ecological balance, and consequently the provision of ecosystem services and goods on which the livelihoods of millions of people depend. As such, there is a need for a better understanding of how climate change affects coastal areas and communities, and for the identification of processes, methods and tools that can help the countries and communities in coastal areas to adapt and become more resilient. It is against this background that this book has been produced. It includes papers written by scholars, social movements, practitioners and members of governmental agencies, pursuing research and/or executing climate change projects in coastal areas and working with coastal communities. Focusing on "managing climate change in coastal regions", it showcases valuable lessons learned from research and field projects and presents best practices to foster climate change adaptation in coastal areas and communities, which can be implemented elsewhere.

There is a growing recognition of the contact we need with nature to be happy, healthy and to lead meaningful lives. We need that nature daily, if not hourly, and so it must be nearby to where we live and work. This is central to the concept of 'biophilic cities' which is emerging as a global movement and guiding framework for city design and planning. Blue Biophilic Cities is about the promise of this movement and a kind of biophilic urbanism that is possible for cities perched on the edge of harbours and seas. In blue biophilic cities, much of the nearby nature is to be found in the marine realm. This book explores the efforts underway in a number of cities to foster new marine connections through a variety of innovative programs and initiatives. It also discusses a number of design ideas, from dynamic shoreline edges and floodable parks to living breakwaters, in order to emphasise the possibility of designing for resilience while also supporting marine biodiversity and strengthening biophilic connections to the marine world.

This book provides a snapshot of representative modeling analyses of coastal hypoxia and its effects. Hypoxia refers to conditions in the water column where dissolved oxygen falls below levels that can support most metazoan marine life (i.e., 2 mg O2 l-1). The number of hypoxic zones has been increasing at an exponential rate since the 1960s; there are currently more than 600 documented hypoxic zones in the estuarine and coastal waters worldwide. Hypoxia develops as a synergistic product of many physical and biological factors that affect the balance of dissolved oxygen in seawater, including temperature, solar radiation, wind, freshwater discharge, nutrient supply, and the production and decay of organic matter. A number of modeling approaches have been increasingly used in hypoxia research, along with the more traditional observational and experimental studies. Modeling is necessary because of rapidly changing coastal circulation and stratification patterns that affect hypoxia, the large spatial extent over which hypoxia develops, and limitations on our capabilities to directly measure hypoxia over large spatial and temporal scales. This book consists of 15 chapters that are broadly organized around three main topics: (1) Modeling of the physical controls on hypoxia, (2) Modeling of biogeochemical controls and feedbacks, and, (3) Modeling of the ecological effects of hypoxia. The final chapter is a synthesis chapter that draws generalities from the earlier chapters, highlights strengths and weaknesses of the current state-of-the-art modeling, and offers recommendations on future directions.

This book consolidates the information, results, experience and perspectives of different research groups working on Chilean Saltmarshes. Some aspects of these ecosystems such as their bio-geographical connectivity, flora and faunal components, the interaction between ecosystem components and especially the response of this kind of ecosystems to human and natural perturbations defines the Chilean Saltmarshes as an attractive systems for future studies, focused into test the theoretical and experimental aspects of saltmarshes and general ecology.

This unique book provides a concise account of Indian Paleogene and presents a unified view of the Paleogene sequences of India. The Paleogene, comprising the early part of the Cenozoic Era, was the most dynamic period in the Earth's history with profound changes in the biosphere and geosphere. The period spans ~42 million years, beginning from post- K/T mass extinction event at ~65 Ma and ending at ~23 Ma, when the first Antarctic ice sheet appeared in the Southern Hemisphere. The early Paleogene (Paleocene-Eocene) has been considered a globally warm period, superimposed on which were several transient hyperthermal events of extreme warmth. Of these, the Palaeocene Eocene Thermal Maxima (PETM) boundary interval is the most prominent extreme warming episode, lasting 200 Ka. PETM is characterized by 2-60/00 global negative carbon isotope excursion. The event coincided with the Benthic Extinction Event (BEE) in deep sea and Larger Foraminifera Turnover (LFT) in shallow seas. Rapid ~60-80 warming of high latitudinal regions led to major faunal and floral turnovers in continental, shallow-marine and deep-marine areas. The emergence and dispersal of mammals with modern characteristics, including Artiodactyls, Perissodactyls and Primates (APP), and the evolution and expansion of tropical vegetation are some of the significant features of the Paleogene warm world. In the Indian subcontinent, the beginning and end of the Paleogene was marked by various events that shaped the various physiographic features of the Indian subcontinent. The subcontinent lay within the equatorial zone during the earliest part of the Paleogene. Carbonaceous shale, coal and lignite deposits of early Eocene age (~55.5-52 Ma) on the western and north-eastern margins of the Indian subcontinent are rich in fossils and provide information on climate as well as the evolution and paleobiogeography of tropical biota. Indian Paleogene deposits in the India-Asia collision zone also provide information pertaining to the paleogeography and timing of collision. Indian Paleogene rocks are exposed in the Himalayan and Arakan mountains; Assam and the shelf basins of Kutch-Saurashtra, Western Rajasthan; Tiruchirappalli-Pondicherry and Andaman and, though aerially limited, these rocks bear geological evidence of immense importance.

This thesis proposes a new raft-type wave-powered desalination device that can convert wave power into hydraulic energy and use reverse osmosis (RO) to directly desalinate seawater. Both analytical and numerical methods are used to study the hydrodynamic characteristics of the device. Further, the thesis investigates the maximum power extraction and multiple parameter effects on power absorption and averaged permeate water flux. Lastly, it proposes and assesses two power extraction enhancing strategies. The thesis offers a valuable and important reference guide to ocean-wave-and-structure interaction and wave-powered seawater desalination for scientists and engineers alike.

This book presents chapters, written by leading coastal scientists, which collectively depict the current understanding of the processes that shape barrier islands and barrier spits, with an emphasis on the response of these landforms to changing conditions. A majority of the world's population lives along the coast at the dynamic intersection between terrestrial and marine ecosystems and landscapes. As narrow, low-lying landforms, barriers are especially vulnerable to changes in sea level, storminess, the geographic distribution of grass species, and the rate of sand supply-some barriers will undergo rapid changes in state (e.g., from landward migrating to disintegrating), on human time scales. Attempts by humans to prevent change can hasten the loss of these landforms, threatening their continued existence as well as the recreational, financial and ecosystem service benefits they provide. Understanding the processes and interactions that drive landscape response to climate change and human actions is essential to adaptation. As managers and governments struggle to plan for the future along low-lying coasts worldwide, and scientists conduct research that provides useful guidance, this volume offers a much-needed compilation for these groups, as well as a window into the science of barrier dynamics for anyone who is generally interested in the impacts of a changing world on coastal environments.

This brief is based on an analysis that was performed on the 2010 winter storms that caused considerable damage to coastal communities in Atlantic Canada. The hazards that occurred were associated with storm surge, high waves, coastal erosion, and flooding. The analysis covered a large multisite longitudinal project, where a participatory action research (PAR) approach was used to understand how people in 10 coastal communities perceive and experience extreme weather events and to enhance their capacity to adapt and improve their resilience. This brief exposes the outcome of two series of interviews and activities that were conducted during the project, as well as the lessons learned, and general elements that should be considered when researchers collaborate with communities to define adaptation and resilience strategies. It makes an important contribution to the application of PAR as an integrated (social-ecological) approach to resilience and how such an approach can be adapted also to other communities.

This volume presents the history of marine fog research and applications, and discusses the physical processes leading to fog's formation, evolution, and dissipation. A special emphasis is on the challenges and advancements of fog observation and modeling as well as on efforts toward operational fog forecasting and linkages and feedbacks between marine fog and the environment.

One of the largest estuaries on the North Atlantic coast, Narragansett Bay served as a gateway for colonial expansion in the seventeenth century and the birthplace of American industrialization in the late eighteenth. Christopher Pastore presents an environmental history of this watery corner of the Atlantic world, beginning with the first European settlement in 1636 and ending with the dissolution of the Blackstone Canal Company in 1849. Between Land and Sea "traces how the Bay s complex ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn reconfigured the physical and cultural boundaries between humans and nature.

Narragansett Bay emerges in Pastore s account as much more than a geological formation. Rather, he reimagines the nexus of land and sea as a brackish borderland shaped by the tension between what English settlers saw as improvable land and the perpetual forces of the North Atlantic Ocean. By draining swamps, damming rivers, and digging canals, settlers transformed a marshy coastal margin into a clearly defined edge. The resultant coastline proved less resilient, less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation than the soggy fractal of water and earth it replaced.

Today, as sea levels rise and superstorms batter coasts with increasing ferocity, Between Land and Sea" calls on the environmentally-minded to make a space in their notions of progress for impermanence and uncertainty in the natural world."

This new edition of Guide to Process Based Modeling of Lakes and Coastal Seas brings the modeling up to date, taking into account multiple stressors acting on aquatic systems. The combination of acidification and increasing amounts of anoxic waters associated with eutrophication puts severe stress on the marine environment. The detection and attribution of anthropogenic changes in coastal seas are therefore crucial and transparent modeling tools are increasingly important. Modeling the marine CO2–O2 system makes systematic studies on climate change and eutrophication possible and is fundamental for understanding the Earth system. This second edition also includes new sections on detection and attribution and on modeling future changes, as well as improved exercises, updated software, and datasets. This unique book will stimulate students and researchers to develop their modeling skills and make model codes and data transparent to other research groups. It uses the general equation solver PROBE to introduce process-oriented numerical modeling and to build understanding of the subject step by step. The equation solver has been used in many applications, particularly in Sweden and Finland with their numerous lakes, archipelago seas, fjords, and coastal zones. It has also been used for process studies in the Polar Seas and the Mediterranean Sea and the approach is suitable for applications in many other environmental applications. Guide to Process Based Modeling of Lakes and Coastal Seas: • is a unique teaching tool for systematic learning of aquatic modeling; • approaches lake and ocean modeling from a new angle; • introduces aquatic numerical modeling using a process-based approach; • enables the thorough understanding of the physics and biogeochemistry of lakes and coastal seas; • provides software, datasets, and algorithms needed to reproduce all calculations and results in the book; • provides a number of creative and stimulating exercises with solutions; • addresses the interaction between climate change and eutrophication and is a good basis for learning Earth System Sciences.

Edited in collaboration with TEN ECOPORT project, this volume contains the proceedings of the 1st International Conference on ‘Sustainable Development of the Sea-corridors and Coastal Waters’. The book highlights the advances of environmental pollution management on ports and coastal zones. Particular attention is given to water quality, issues that concern the marine environment of sea corridors and coastal waters, especially in regions surrounding ports. In addition to these topics the chapters explore novel methodologies and technologies, IT solutions, data and instrumentation of monitoring water quality. The book is organized into five parts: assessment, monitoring, sustainable management system, port processes and historical ports. TEN ECOPORT (Transnational ENhancement of ECOPORT8 network) is a project co-financed by the South East Europe Transnational Cooperation Programme.

This book is a collection of scholarly articles presenting the research results of work carried out under the supervision of Prof. Saroj Bhosle, a microbiologist at Goa University, India.The objective of this volume is to document the comprehensive ecological knowledge of eubacteria isolated from diverse coastal ecosystems of Goa, little explored for microbiological studies. These ecosystems need to be properly tapped in order to reveal potential bacteria yet to be exploited. The topics of this book are particularly relevant to researchers and students in the field of microbiology with an interest in the varied aspects of eubacteria. They provide academic insight for scientific communities in Goa and the rest of the world.

Human impacts and emerging mega-trends such as climate change and energy scarcity will impact natural resource management in this century. This is especially true for deltas because of their ecological and economic importance and their sensitivity to climate change. The Mississippi delta is one of the largest in the world and has been strongly impacted by human activities. Currently there is an ambitious plan for restoration of the delta. This book, by a renown group of delta experts, provides an overview of the challenges facing the delta and charts - a way forward to sustainable management.

Mangroves are basically salt tolerant forest ecosystems found mainly in tropical and sub-tropical inter-tidal regions. Till about 1960s, mangroves were largely viewed as “economically unproductive areas� and were therefore destroyed for reclaiming land for various economic and commercial activities. Gradually, with the passage of time, the economic and ecological benefits of mangroves have become visible and their importance is now well appreciated. Today, mangroves are observed in about 30 countries in tropical subtropical regions covering an area of about 99,300 Sq.Km. However, during the past 50 years, over 50% of the mangrove cover has been lost, mainly because of the increased pressure of human activities like shrimp farming and agriculture, forestry, salt extraction, urban development, tourist development and infrastructure. Also, dam on rivers, contamination of sea waters caused by heavy metals, oil spills, pesticides and other products etc. have been found to be responsible for the decline of mangroves. Although the temperature effect on growth and species diversity is not known, sea-level rise may pose a serious threat to these ecosystems The present book addresses all these important issues in separate chapters with some interesting case studies whose data may serve as pathfinder for future researches in the sphere of the influence of climate change on mangrove ecosystem. The role of mangroves in the sector of bioremediation is a unique feather in the crown of this coastal and brackishwater vegetation that may be taken up by the coastal industries in order to maintain the health of ambient environment. This book seeks to discover and to assess the vulnerability of climate change on mangrove flora and fauna, their role in carbon sequestration and some interesting case studies by some groups of dedicated researchers that may serve as the basis of future climate related policies.

This book provides a snapshot of representative modeling analyses of coastal hypoxia and its effects. Hypoxia refers to conditions in the water column where dissolved oxygen falls below levels that can support most metazoan marine life (i.e., 2 mg O2 l-1). The number of hypoxic zones has been increasing at an exponential rate since the 1960s; there are currently more than 600 documented hypoxic zones in the estuarine and coastal waters worldwide. Hypoxia develops as a synergistic product of many physical and biological factors that affect the balance of dissolved oxygen in seawater, including temperature, solar radiation, wind, freshwater discharge, nutrient supply, and the production and decay of organic matter. A number of modeling approaches have been increasingly used in hypoxia research, along with the more traditional observational and experimental studies. Modeling is necessary because of rapidly changing coastal circulation and stratification patterns that affect hypoxia, the large spatial extent over which hypoxia develops, and limitations on our capabilities to directly measure hypoxia over large spatial and temporal scales. This book consists of 15 chapters that are broadly organized around three main topics: (1) Modeling of the physical controls on hypoxia, (2) Modeling of biogeochemical controls and feedbacks, and, (3) Modeling of the ecological effects of hypoxia. The final chapter is a synthesis chapter that draws generalities from the earlier chapters, highlights strengths and weaknesses of the current state-of-the-art modeling, and offers recommendations on future directions.

This book is the outcome of rigorous and continuous research work done by the author over about three decades on the open ecosystem and dynamic environment of the estuarine Sunderbans. The objective of this work is to identify the field and factors changing gradually upon this active delta over the years, decades and centuries. The deltaic Sunderbans yet not mature enough, has been changing in its natural course with time. Further, anthropogenic interferences disturb the environments and accelerate degradation of nature of this fragile ecosystem simultaneously. Roles played by almost all the agents including man and environment and their involvement are identified for the changing environmental scenario of the Sunderbans. The book is befitted for the researchers and students for the post graduate levels. The Sunderbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering parts of Bangladesh and the southern tip of Indian state of West Bengal, is a part of world's largest deltaic plain of fluvio-marine deposit formed by the Ganges and Brahmaputra at the confluence of the Bay of Bengal. It is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world, conspicuous for its great size and biodiversity. With an enormous network of channels and creeks, tidal inundation twice daily, Sunderbans mangroves wetland is a dynamic and complex ecosystem, which undergoes continuous processes of erosion and accretion. Natural processes like changes in local hydrology, sediment motion under wind, wave and tidal action, beach dynamics, regional and global processes like sea level rise as well as the impact of human interference in the form of reclamation of forest land, changes in land use patterns, coastal urbanizations etc are the lead factors for the changes in the environmental scenario of Sunderbans.

"New Frontiers in Engineering Geology and the Environment" collects selected papers presented at the International Symposium on Coastal Engineering Geology (ISCEG-Shanghai 2012). These papers involve many subjects - such as engineering geology, natural hazards, geoenvironment and geotechnical engineering - with a primary focus on geological engineering problems in coastal regions. The proceedings provide readers with the latest research results and engineering experiences from academic scientists, leading engineers and industry researchers who are interested in coastal engineering geology and the relevant fields. Yu Huang works at the Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, China. Faquan Wu works at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, China and he is also the Secretary General of the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment. Zhenming Shi works at the Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, China. Bin Ye works at the Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, China.

This book elaborates on the Khazan ecosystems of Goa, India. Khazans are human-managed ecosystems, which are reclaimed from coastal wetlands, salt marshes and mangrove areas, where tidal influence is regulated through a highly structured system of dykes, canals, furrows, and sluice gates using resources that are amply available locally. Khazan ecosystems are marvels of tribal engineering. They are a simple architectural design, which operate at a very low running cost using tidal, hydro, and solar energy. The design contributes to a highly complex but eco-friendly ecosystem integrating agriculture, aquaculture and salt panning. . Khazan ecosystems have been functional for the last 3500 years. The history of Khazans is very ancient and can be traced to the transition from food gathering to food growing, which has been regarded as the biggest step in the history of human civilization. Khazan ecosystems thus have a high historical and world heritage value. They are also repositories of global biodiversity, with unique flora suitable to their unique and highly variable environment. They are endemic and heritage ecosystems of Goa and ultimately reservoirs of history and heritage. Using the example of the Khazan lands, the book analyzes and comments on traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous technology. It presents the evolution of Khazan management institutions over a period of more than three thousand years, as well as factors that have contributed to its decline in recent years. It develops a conceptual framework for ecosystem performance and suggests strategies for conservation of Khazans as well as strategies to build on these indigenous adaptation mechanisms to cope with the global environmental change.