The benthic marine community in the Pacific Island Network (PACN) is a complex ecologic system and a diverse taxonomic environment, including algae and corals and other invertebrates. Reef-building corals are the primary architectural organism and are sensitive to environmental degradation; therefore, they are a good indicator of overall health for nearshore park's marine ecosystems. The benthic marine protocol will be implemented initially in four parks: Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park (KAHO), Kalaupapa National Historical Park (KALA), National Park of American Samoa (NPSA), and War in the Pacific National Historical Park (WAPA). The protocol addresses two monitoring questions: 1) what are the changes over time in the composition (e.g., species or assemblage) and physical structure (rugosity) of the coral reef benthos? And, 2) what are the changes over time in settlement, growth, survival, and health of target coral assemblages, species, or individuals? The first monitoring question has two objectives.

An autobiographical story of growing up with lobsters in a small New England town. Everything you've always wanted to know about the American Lobster. Filled with 170 unique high-resolution photo images of native New England marine sea life and lobsters in all stages of life & death. Includes detailed accounts of topwater lobstering procedures and the many things that could go wrong. Also underwater SCUBA diving observations of lobsters, down on the bottom where they live. Dive into the murky New England seawater at night, and look through a divers' mask to see a priceless gift, a lobster. The story of the first ill-fated attempt to transport New England lobsters overland to California in 1873. The year after, it was tried again, a bust Instructional views of the lobster; boy or girl? What a lobster eats, how he selects a mate, shell disease, epimorphic regeneration of new parts, and everything else they do when we aren't looking. A section on the Florida spiny vs the New England clawed lobster; which tastes better? Photos comparing each, side by side. And a no-nonsense blind taste test conducted on exactly which tastes more "lobstery." Take a stop on Route #1 in Wiscasset Maine at Red's Eats. It tells a story of the best lobster roll around, in the writers' opinion, and photos of the reasons why The Maine Lobster Festival, an expose of an affair that's everything LOBSTER. Included are photos of the largest lobster cooker in the world, the fair grounds, and a personal story from the 2011 Lobster Festival Cooking Contest. Photos and a story of the winning recipe is included described as, "The best seafood I ever ate" Have you ever wondered if it were possible to setup a lobster aquarium in your own home? Well it is possible, and this book shows you exactly how to do it, from one who's done it for years. Includes his notes, photos, observations, setbacks, and triumphs. You'll also find little known historical facts including insightful details about the 1999 Long Island Sound lobster die-off mortality event. What caused it, and can it happen again? Also a futuristic view of the lobsters in days to come. This book details many interesting personal accounts and encounters with lobsters at the bottom, where they live. A Connecticut Yankee who'd spent over 50 years with New England lobsters in some form or another tells this story. Where they came from 511 million years ago, up until today, and where they might be tomorrow. Lastly, read about Noofie, an 8-pound American lobster from the deep waters of the Canadian Maritimes. He lived with the author for about a year. In that time, he showed the author things that he could never have imagined. You'll read about this incredible story, one that has a surprise ending. One reader's quote: "Wow I'm not the best with words but after reading your book, this is what comes to mind: Entertaining and fun while being educational and making you reflect on life. Awesome job, Thank you "

A stunning glimpse of some of Britain's finest coastline, from the granite columns of the Giant's Causeway on the Northern Irish coast and the rocky cliffs of Wales and South West England to the great open horizons of the East Anglian shore. A stunning glimpse of some of Britain's finest coastline, from the granite columns of the Giant's Causeway on the Northern Irish coast and the rocky cliffs of Wales and South West England to the great open horizons of the East Anglian shore. However, this is not just a celebration of Britain's beauty, but an investigation into the preservation and maintenance of the UK's coastline. The Trust owns a remarkable amount of coastline, looking after it not only as a landlord and at times a harbourmaster, but caring for natural habitats, archaeological sites and historic buildings. Here is a chance to view some of the most unforgettable images of, and discover less-known truths about, our extraordinary coastline.

Inspired by the Arkansas Review’s “What Is the Delta?” series of articles,Defining the Delta collects fifteen essays from scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to describe and define this important region. Here are essays examining the Delta’s physical properties, boundaries, and climate from a geologist, archeologist, and environmental historian. The Delta is also viewed through the lens of the social sciences and humanities—historians, folklorists, and others studying the connection between the land and its people, in particular the importance of agriculture and the culture of the area, especially music, literature, and food. Every turn of the page reveals another way of seeing the seven-state region that is bisected by and dependent on the Mississippi River, suggesting ultimately that there are myriad ways of looking at, and defining, the Delta.

The coastal environment is a dynamic system in which natural and human processes combine and interact, modifying geomorphological, physical and biological features, and in which beaches represent the most vulnerable areas. Coastal erosion is caused by many different processes like changes in prevailing wind direction, coastal currents, re-establishment of a new equilibrium profile, sea level rise, sea level fall, exceptional storms, hurricanes/cyclones, and tsunami events. This book discusses the processes, adaptation strategies and environmental impacts of coastal and beach erosion.

Coastal areas across the United States are beginning to incorporate sea level rise adaptation into their community planning. One of the most challenging aspects of adapting to sea level rise is understanding the economic implications of future inundation risk, and the costs and benefits of different adaptation options. Communities are already grappling with difficult decisions about how to locate, maintain, and protect expensive community infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, and wastewater treatment plants. This book provides a framework that community leaders and planners can use to make more economically informed decisions about adapting to sea level rise and storm flooding. The four-step framework can be used to perform a holistic assessment of costs and benefits of different adaptation approaches across a community, or to focus in on select infrastructure. The book also discusses the expertise needed at each step in the process.

This is a tribute to the sea, or the Ocean, or all the water around us. The sea, the world ocean, or simply the ocean, is the connected body of salty water that covers over 70 percent of the Earth's surface. It moderates the Earth's climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. Although the sea has been travelled and explored since ancient times, the scientific study of the sea dates broadly from the voyages of Captain James Cook who explored the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In geography, "sea" is used in the names of smaller, partly landlocked sections of the ocean, for example the Irish Sea, while "ocean" is used in the names of the five largest sections, such as the Pacific Ocean. The most abundant ions in sea water are chloride and sodium. The water also contains magnesium, sulfate, calcium, potassium, and many other components, some in minute concentrations. Salinity varies widely, being lower near the surface and the mouths of large rivers and higher in the depths of the ocean; however the relative proportions of dissolved salts vary little across the oceans. Carbon dioxide from the air is currently being absorbed by the sea in increasing amounts, lowering seawater pH in a process known as ocean acidification, which is likely to damage marine ecosystems in the near future. Winds blowing over the surface of the sea produce waves, which break when they reach shallow water. Winds also create surface currents through friction, setting up slow but stable circulations of water throughout the oceans. The directions of the circulation are governed by factors including the shapes of the continents and the rotation of the earth. Deep-sea currents, known as the global conveyor belt, carry cold water from near the poles to every ocean. Tides are caused by the rotation of the Earth and the gravitational effects of the orbiting Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Sun. Tides may have a very high range in bays or estuaries. A wide variety of life, including viruses, bacteria, protists, algae, plants, fungi and animals, lives in the sea, which offers a wide range of marine habitats and ecosystems, ranging from sunlit surface waters to the enormous depths and pressures of the cold, dark abyssal zone. The sea also varies in latitude from the cold waters beneath the Arctic ice to the colourful diversity of coral reefs in the tropics. Many of the major groups of organisms evolved in the sea and life may have started there. The sea provides people with substantial supplies of food, mainly fish, but also shellfish, mammals and seaweed, whether harvested in the wild or farmed underwater. The sea also serves other purposes, including trade, travel, mineral extraction, power generation, warfare, and leisure activities such as swimming, surfing, sailing and scuba diving. The sea has played an important part in culture throughout history, with major appearances in literature at least since Homer's Odyssey, in marine art, in cinema, in theater, and in classical music. Symbolically, the sea appears as monsters such as Scylla in mythology and represents the unconscious mind in dream interpretation. The sea is the interconnected system of all the Earth's oceanic waters, including the five named "oceans," the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern and Arctic Oceans. The word "sea" is used in the names of specific, smaller bodies of seawater, such as the North Sea or the Red Sea. There is no sharp distinction between seas and oceans, though seas are smaller, and are partly (as marginal seas) or wholly (as inland seas) bordered by land, on a smaller scale than say the Atlantic Ocean. However, the Sargasso Sea has no coastline and lies within a circular current, the North Atlantic Gyre. Seas are generally larger than lakes and contain salt water, but the Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that all of the ocean is "sea."

Public attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs can strongly influence coastal management decision-making. Officials use surveys and other social science tools to identify the relationship between a community and its natural resources. Managing coastal resources often means making hard decisions about the best way to use those resources-especially when there are competing demands. Although there is no simple way to do this, economic methods can help coastal resource managers make better-informed decisions about managing the resource. This book provides insight into the various types and methods of survey research; discusses some of the most important considerations; offers a guide to the most common techniques; provides information about how economics can be applied to coastal resource management; provides some simple strategies for facilitators leading a participatory mapping process; introduces key elements and practices that will increase the success of a focus group effort; explains the role of a facilitator; describes how to plan and execute meetings that deliver results; discusses powerful photorealistic visualization; introduces key concepts surrounding visualization; and briefly describes a process for planning for an internally or externally conducted evaluation of a project or program.

This report details the results of the 21st year of the Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) monitoring program within Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin County, California (PRNS). The goal of the 2010 monitoring effort was to determine abundance, distribution, and breeding success of snowy plovers nesting on federal lands within PRNS. The intended audience of this report includes appropriate agencies at the county, state, and federal levels. The report provides an overview of the 2010 snowy plover monitoring program on federal lands and summarizes the results of the data collected during the field season.

This title is written to expand K-12 Biology classes and bring a specialist's ecological study to the front of a student's midterm or final science project. Ecology is a very fascinating field to enter.The book intends to introduce the student to real inductive reasoning as used by present day ecologists. They can prepare and begin a study of their own based on the principles introduced by "gross Production and Evolution."

Coastal zones have always been chosen by humans as a good place to live. Over the last forty years, human pressure has caused a strong variation of land use and wild areas have been consumed by agriculture, roads and settlements. The main causes of ecosystem loss are the coastal erosion, and the sprawl of infrastructures and economic sites. This book discusses several topics, some of which include the coral reef environment; the land cover change as a tool to support the preservation of naturalness at the Sele coastal plain in Italy; principles of dredging eco-monitoring in the Eastern Gulf of Finland; and others.

Written by the Georgia Geologic Survey, this is a guide to landforms and natural features you will see on Cumberland Island. Black and white pictures with maps and diagrams illustrate the topics discussed. This book includes a walking route with stops at many of the important features on Cumberland Island.

Global and regional changes to the marine environment associated with climate change may have significant consequences for coral reef ecosystems, coastal communities, and maritime heritage resources relevant to the Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary (FBNMS). Regional physical changes to the marine environment include climate variability, sea level rise, ocean circulation patterns, and ocean acidification. These changes combined with anthropogenic stressors may produce cumulative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem health including changes in physiology, phenology, and population connectivity, and species range shift. This paper identifies and synthesizes potential climate change impacts in American Samoa and the region over the next fifty years. This information will help inform priority management actions for the Sanctuary to take to respond to the impacts of climate change on natural systems and human activities within American Samoa.

This report presents data that estimate the extent (status) of Texas coastal wetlands in the early 1990s and the changes in areal extent (trends) that have taken place since the mid-1950s. These data may indicate the impact of existing policies and programs intended to conserve the state's valuable coastal wetlands resources, and identify which wetland habitats are experiencing change.

A collection of first-person stories and essays about living on Pine Island, a barrier island off the West Coast of Florida. The author and his wife have lived on Pine Island for 18 years and have met just about every kind of animal, insect, amphibian, reptile and person that inhabits small, sub-tropical mangrove islands in this part of Florida. Often humorous, the stories share the lives of creatures often unseen by other people. Also shared are weather patterns, including a category 5 hurricane, and the many "transplants," non-native species that have made Florida their permanent home.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) has developed this Draft Comprehensive Conservation Plan for Banks Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Lanier County, Georgia, to guide the refuge's management actions and direction over the next 15 years. Fish and wildlife conservation will receive first priority in refuge management, while wildlife-dependent recreation will be allowed and encouraged as long as it is compatible with, and does not detract from, the mission of the refuge or the purposes for which it was established. A planning team developed a range of alternatives that best met the goals and objectives of the refuge and that could be implemented within the 15-year planning period. This draft comprehensive conservation plan and its environmental assessment (Section B) describe the Service's proposed plan, as well as the other alternatives that are being considered and their potential effects on the environment.

The maritime holly forest is a unique assemblage of species dominated by the broadleaf evergreen, Ilex opaca (American holly). Due to the highly restricted occurrence of this forest community to only two locations on barrier islands in New York and New Jersey, it has been classified as a critically imperiled community (global conservation status rank of G1; NatureServe 2004) because of extreme rarity or very few remaining acres. The only two examples known of the maritime holly forest include: the Sunken Forest (SF; 16 ha) occurring on Fire Island National Seashore, a barrier island protecting Long Island, NY; and the Sandy Hook (SH) holly forest (30 ha) occurring on a barrier spit on the NJ shore that is a unit of Gateway National Recreation Area (GNRA). This project was born from the uncertainty surrounding key conservation issues, and in 2004 was listed as the primary research priority for Fire Island National Seashore due to the uniqueness of the SF among maritime forests of the Atlantic coast, its prominence in the park's enabling legislation and Resource Stewardship Plan, and its interpretive value to the visiting public. An important objective of the research was to assist the park in developing reasonable conservation goals for sustaining the essential characteristics of the SF. This research investigated whether canopy constituents of this maritime holly forest are maintaining themselves under the current levels of herbivory and other disturbances. The authors present this report in executive summary format through a series of questions that probe different aspects of vegetation dynamics of the SF. The authors do this for two reasons. First, the scope of the work is broad and includes research approaches and methods that are somewhat disparate and unrelated, making the presentation of the full work awkward. Second, the research on which the report is based already appears in the peer-reviewed scientific literature as discrete units with specific objectives and methodologies. We refer the reader directly to those published accounts for the methodological details.

The effects of off-road vehicles (ORVs) on invertebrates inhabiting macrophyte debris (wrack) and supratidal sands on energetic beaches in the northeastern United States were studied at Cape Cod (MA) and Fire Island (NY) National Seashores. the authors focus on the effects of off-road vehicles on the supratidal invertebrates. First, they compare four different wrack-laden beaches in the northeastern U.S. (three within Cape Cod National Seashore, one within Fire Island National Seashore) that have neighboring sections of ORV-traveled and ORV-free beach and second, the authors perform a controlled direct-impact study, in which we drive over colonized, experimental wrack clumps near Ballston Beach, MA, to assess the effects. By replicating their sampling at four beaches and using several sampling methods, the authors strove to maximize the chances that observed differences between treatment (traffic) and control (non-traffic) sites were due to ORV activity. In the manipulative experiment, the authors controlled the level and timing of the traffic that the wrack-associated species received. In addition, the authors compared accompanying environmental variables that may be good indicators of the effect of traffic on invertebrate habitat.

Fish are a major component of the coral reef ecosystem, potentially numbering 500 - 1,100 species in Pacific Islands Network (PACN) parks depending on geographic location (Allen et al. 2003, Randall 2005, Randall 2007). This highly diverse assemblage of carnivores, planktivores, herbivores and detritivores serve a variety of ecological functions that affect ecosystem structure, productivity, and sustainability (e.g., Sale 1991, Hixon 1997). Fish assemblages or selected species can also act as indicators of general reef health and provide a warning of environmental stress and potential ecosystem change (e.g., Friedlander and DeMartini 2002). Additionally, fish within the parks are harvested in traditional, subsistence, artisanal, and recreational fisheries (e.g., Craig et al. 2008) which may affect the species composition, abundance and size of targeted species. Fishing is increasingly being recognized as the principal threat to Pacific coral reefs and other marine ecosystems worldwide (e.g., Dayton 1998, Friedlander and DeMartini 2002, Birkeland 2004, Hutchings and Reynolds 2004). In this respect, it is highly probable that most of the Pacific Islands parks can be categorized as "impaired" to "seriously impaired" in terms of their fish communities. Marine Fish ranked 11th in priority as a network Vital Sign. While the harvest of fish is addressed in a separate complementary (fisheries-dependent) protocol, data collected through the Marine Fish Protocol will contribute to the overall understanding by providing an in-water (fisheries-independent) assessment of the size and numerical density of daytime, non-cryptic species within park waters. Monitoring efforts will be conducted concurrently with Water Quality and Benthic Marine Community Vital Signs to maximize data interpretation value.

This report provides a summary of resources in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, pressures on those resources, current condition and trends, and management responses to the pressures that threaten the integrity of the marine environment. This document includes information on the status and trends of water quality, habitat, living resources and maritime archaeological resources and the human activities that affect them. Trends in the status of resources are also reported, and are generally based on observed changes in status over the past five years, unless otherwise specified.

This volume is written by leading authorities in red algae. All subfamilies, genera and species are described, notes on ecology and distribution given, and each named species is illustrated by one or more half-tones or line drawings showing distinctive features. User-friendly keys are provided to enable identifi cation of genera and species. Special features of this volume are the concise but comprehensive and practical introduction and a complete re-evaluation of British Isles taxa in consultation with other international specialists. This is a reprint edition of ISBN 1898298815 published in 1993.